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Autobiography   /ˌɔtəbaɪˈɑgrəfi/   Listen
Autobiography

noun
(pl. autobiographies)
1.
A biography of yourself.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Autobiography" Quotes from Famous Books



... makes himself truly their companion, and relates his own history in narrating theirs; pleased to discover in their joys and sorrows his own trials and delights; mingling in their annals his memories and his impressions; delightful fragments of a childlike autobiography, encrusted in his learned work; moving and delightful pages in which all the ingenuity of this noble mind reveals itself with a touching sincerity, in which all the freshness of this charming and so profoundly unworldly nature is seen as through ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... masterpieces of concise story-telling have been included in the popular two-volume edition of "Fortaellinger," which contains also "The Fisher-maiden" (1867-68), the exquisite story, "The Bridal March" (1872), originally written as text to three of Tidemand's paintings, and a vigorous bit of disguised autobiography, "Blakken," of which not the author but a horse is ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... breaks with the suddenness of an epoch, and the child is aware of a new existence. A little girl of my acquaintance turned from play to her mother with the cry, "Why, mamma, little girls don't know that they are." She had just discovered it. In a famous passage of his autobiography, Jean Paul Richter has recorded the great change in himself: "Never shall I forget the inward experience of the birth of self-consciousness. I well remember the time and place. I stood one afternoon, a very young child, at the house-door, ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer

... To his daughter when a little girl. To his daughter on her studies and on ease of manner. On thoroughness of education. On Jefferson's autobiography. On the actor's life. Lawrence Barrett's death. His theatre in New York in prospect. As to his brother, John Wilkes Booth, the slayer of Lincoln. Advice ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... read are a little fragment of his autobiography which deal with a prosaic enough matter, but carry in them large principles. When he was appointed governor of the little colony of returned exiles in Palestine, he found that his predecessors, like Turkish pashas and Chinese ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... is not to be read as a novel: it is to be studied as an autobiography, a prophecy, a record of aspirations, disguised under a series of incidents which are flung together with no more regard to the unities than a pack of shuffled playing-cards. I can do nothing better than let him picture himself, for it is ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to me that these letters picture our author more faithfully than could any portrait drawn by another. Thomas Bailey Aldrich has said that no man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest portrait of himself in an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set about it; that in spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds superfluous ones; that at times he cannot help draping his thought, and that, of course, the least shred of ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... the Jews" traces the whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the great war. He also wrote an autobiography (see Lives and Letters) and a polemical treatise, "Flavius Josephus against Apion." His style is so classically elegant that critics have called him the Greek Livy. The following summary of the "Antiquities of the Jews" contains the substance of the really valuable sections, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... of quick and enthusiastic temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... camera—screwed to its tripod—against the wall by the door. "I'm Luck Lindsay, Mr. White," he announced in his easy, Texas drawl. "I'm in a hurry, so I'll omit my full autobiography, if you don't mind, and let you draw your own conclusions about my reputation and character. I've a five-reel feature film called The Phantom Herd just completed, and I want to take it down to El Paso and show it before the Texas Cattlemen's ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... PIERRE LOTI is LOUIS MARIE JULIEN VIAUD. He was born of Protestant parents, in the old city of Rochefort, on the 14th of January, 1850. In one of his pleasant volumes of autobiography, "Le Roman d'un Enfant," he has given a very pleasing account of his childhood, which was most tenderly cared for and surrounded with indulgences. At a very early age he began to develop that extreme sensitiveness to external influences which ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... in his autobiography, alludes to the impressive fact that while the eye is reading a single line of type, the earth has travelled thirty miles through space. But this, in telephony, would be slow travelling. It is simple ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... more admire "the lifelong and heroic literary labours" of my fellow-men, patiently clearing up in words their loves and their contentions, and speaking their autobiography daily to their wives, were it not for a circumstance which lessens their difficulty and my admiration by equal parts. For life, though largely, is not entirely carried on by literature. We are subject to physical passions and contortions; the voice breaks and changes, and speaks by ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his soul to the last flicker of a lamp in the darkened theater, or "Frau Sorge,"[221] which gives us the personification of care, represented as a nurse watching by his bedside, bring his objective method into marked contrast with Hoelderlin's subjective Weltschmerz. The same may be said of his autobiography in miniature, "Rueckschau,"[222] which catalogues the poet's experiences, pleasant and adverse, with evident sincerity though of course with a liberal admixture of witty irony. Needless to say there is no real Weltschmerz discoverable in such a ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... criticism include "The Triple Tradition of Exodus," and "The Genesis of Genesis," a study of the documentary sources of the books of Moses. In the field of New Testament study he has published a number of brilliant papers, the most recent of which is "The Autobiography of Jesus," in the American ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

... a more painful lesson in honesty, he relates in his Autobiography. Having one day stolen some stones from an unfinished house while the builders were away, he and his comrades built up a wharf where they might stand and fish for minnows in the mill-pond. They were discovered, complained of, and corrected by their fathers; "and though ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More

... Members were quite interested as he proceeded to explain, with an engaging blush, that a "hard case" which he had brought to the notice of the WAR MINISTER was his own, and sorry when the SPEAKER brought the narrative to a sudden stop by observing, "This is not the moment for autobiography." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various

... All writing partakes of the quality of the drama, there is always a situation involved, the relation, namely, between the speaker and the hearer. A gentleman in black, expounding his views, or narrating his autobiography to the first comer, can expect no such warmth of response as greets the dying speech of the baffled patriot; yet he too may take account of the reasons that prompt speech, may display sympathy and tact, and avoid the faults of senility. The only character that can lend strength to his words ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... invited to listen to Someone's Recollections or Reminiscences. All went well for five minutes, when the Autobiographist, looking up from his Autobiography, found that Mr. Punch was fast asleep. The Sage slumbered as the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various

... Laura. I don't know how I came to have that in here. And here's General Grant's autobiography for his namesake," he said with an effort at carelessness, and waited to ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... demand; and it is interesting to learn that after a resistance of three weeks he was forced to yield to the demands of the men by just such measures as are now used against any scab in a unionized printing office. He says in his autobiography: "I had so many little pieces of private mischief done me by mixing my sorts, transposing my pages, breaking my matter, and so forth, if I were ever so little out of the room ... that, notwithstanding the master's protection, I found myself obliged ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot

... publisher's reader, who saw the manuscript of "The Bible in Spain" in 1842, suggested that Borrow should prefix a short account of his birth, parentage, education and life. But already Borrow had taken Ford's hint and was thinking of an autobiography. By the end of 1842 he was suggesting a book on his early life, studies and adventures, Gypsies, boxers, philosophers; and he afterwards announced that "Lavengro" was planned and the characters sketched in 1842 and 1843. He saw himself as a public figure that had to be treated ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... tail of why I wanted to read them. There were two red-letter days: one when I first bought the two volumes of Herrick, the second when I tumbled upon De Quincey. That's the author to bowl a boy over. The Stage-Coach, the Autobiography, the Confessions—I could never get tired of them. I remember buying an ounce of laudanum at a chemist's on London Bridge and taking it home, with the intention of following in the steps of my hero and qualifying to drink it out ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... of biography and criticism have been drawn upon, more especially with reference to the actors of the "old school," which Mr. Winter admires so deeply. There are a number of books, besides these, which make capital reading—Clara Morris's "Life on the Stage," Joseph Jefferson's autobiography, Stoddart's "Recollections of a Player," and Henry Austin Clapp's "Reminiscences of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... belong also the "Lives of the Most Celebrated Artists," written by Vasari (1512-1574), himself a distinguished artist, a work highly interesting for its subject and style, and the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (b. 1500), one of the most curious works which was ever ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... made from all available data in the way of personal recollections, letters, and diaries, although it may approach to wholeness, remains, nevertheless, very largely a construction, a work of literary fiction. The autobiography comes still closer; yet, since it is designed for a public which cannot be expected to view it in a solidly detached fashion, it suffers from the reticence which inevitably intrudes to suppress. In fiction alone, none except artistic motives need ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... who handed to him the poetic impulse, and, up to the time when he grew famous, continued to influence him in his manner and the choice of subjects. Burns himself not only acknowledged his debt in a fragment of autobiography, but erected a tomb over the grave in Canongate churchyard. This was worthy of an artist, but it was done in vain; and although I think I have read nearly all the biographies of Burns, I cannot remember one in which the modesty of nature ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the year 1744 and his decease in 1797 (first Published from the original MSS. in 1844, by Earl Fitswilliam and Sir Richard Bourke), containing numerous Historical and Biographical Notes and original Letters from the leading Statesmen of the period, and forming an Autobiography of this celebrated Writer.—2. The WORKS of MR. BURKE, as edited by his Literary Executor, the late Bishop of Rochester. (This Edition includes the whole of the contents of the former Editions published in 20 vols., at the price of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various

... clear for the two next steps, the concepts of causation and development. Here again why not follow the egocentric plan of starting with what the student knows? Ask him to write a brief but careful autobiography answering the questions—How have I come to be what I am? What influences personal or otherwise have played upon me?[34] The student is almost certain to lay hold of the principle of determining or ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... the meeting to organize the Society for the Suppression of Vice and the Formation of Good Morals, Dr. Beecher in his "Autobiography" gives a sketch of the politics of the time that had led up to the occasion. One of the prominent actors of the time, he tells us that this meeting, composed of prominent Federalists of ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... book. It is autobiography in its perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of god and devil in conflict, than any book ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... falls on isolated scenes, throwing into sudden brilliancy or into the deepest shade long and important periods of his history. Nor are his letters and other writings full of those political and personal allusions which convert them into an autobiography. They are, without exception, occupied exclusively with philosophical questions, or else they only refer to such personal reminiscences as may best be converted into the text for some Stoical paradox or moral ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... whose practical acquaintance with ballooning extends over more than forty years, was the son of a naval officer residing near Chatham, and in his autobiography he describes enthusiastically how, a lad of nine years old, he watched through a sea telescope a balloon, piloted by Charles Green, ascend from Rochester and, crossing the Thames, disappear in distance over the Essex flats. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... biography of Thackeray has ever been written because of his expressed wish, but his daughter, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, has supplied this lack with many sketches and introductions to various editions of her father's works. Anthony Trollope in his autobiography gives many charming glimpses of Thackeray but his sketch of Thackeray in the English Men of Letters series is not ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... Being an Autobiography of the Missouri Guerrilla Captain and Outlaw, his Capture and Prison Life, and the Only Authentic Account of the Northfield Raid Ever ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger

... typical New England woman, whose sympathy with children and child life has made this relation of her public library work a type and model for all who have to do with children.... Miss Hewins's paper was really a delightful bit of literary autobiography, and she has now happily acceded to a request from the Journal to fill out the outlines into ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... before his death, some of his friends made the fortunate suggestion that he should put on paper a detailed account of his sporting adventures, and this idea gradually developed itself until the work took the present form of an autobiography, written roughly, it is true, and put together without much method, part of it being dictated at the Riviera during the last days of the author's fatal illness. Such as it is, however, we are convinced ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... any farther than that. By the way, I shall have to mention eventually that the school was King's College, in the Strand. I am not going to unbosom beyond this, or to add anything in the way of an autobiography; but the locale would have to come out anon, and there is no possible reason ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... and religious impulses must be its subject, and I must confine myself to those more developed subjective phenomena recorded in literature produced by articulate and fully self-conscious men, in works of piety and autobiography. Interesting as the origins and early stages of a subject always are, yet when one seeks earnestly for its full significance, one must always look to its more completely evolved and perfect forms. It follows from this that the documents that will most concern us will be those of the men who ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... Mrs. Akemit's household Percival acknowledged the sway with never a misgiving. He had been the devoted lover of Baby Akemit from the afternoon when he had first cajoled her into autobiography—a vivid, fire-tipped little thing with her mother's piquancy. He gleaned that day that she was "a quarter to four years old;" that she was mamma's girl, but papa was a friend of Santa Claus; that she went to "ball-dances" every day clad in "dest a stirt 'cause big ladies don't ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... work possess any merit of a Narrative order, it will perhaps be found in its fidelity to the characteristics of an Autobiography. The reader must, indeed, comply with the condition exacted from his imagination and faith; that is to say, he must take the hero of the story upon the terms for which Morton Devereux himself stipulates; and regard the supposed Count as one who lived and wrote in the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... mechanics, that Euclid was a Greek geometer, and that Hamilton invented quaternions. All this and vastly more may be impressed on the mind by an hour in the mathematical alcove of a library of moderate size. And it will do no harm to a boy to know that Benvenuto Cellini wrote his autobiography, even if the inevitable perusal of the book is delayed for several years, or that Felicia Hemans, James Thomson, and Robert Herrick wrote poetry, independently of familiarity with their works, or that "Lamia" is not something to eat or "As you like it" a popular novel. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... characteristic bits—especially at the beginning—in the Sartor Resartus vein. I take it that these are reminiscences of Irving and of the Thackeray circle, and there is a curious portrait of Coleridge, not very thinly veiled. There is enough autobiography, too, of interest in its ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... again and again been demonstrated, I have been brought into contact with the minds of more people, and for a longer time, than most men. This I mean not in boast, but as a reason for thinking that this autobiography may have some attention outside of my own circle, and I mention it also in gratitude to God, Who has for so long a time given me this unlimited ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... person, until the Polish lady who taught us the elements of German and French drew someone's attention to it in my sixteenth year. I was not quick, but I passed for being denser than I was because of the myopic haze that enveloped me. But this is not an autobiography, and with the cold and shrouded details of my uninteresting school life I will not ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... You and the world which awaits it so eagerly may both know, but you hear it from the lips of the author. It is nothing less than the autobiography of van ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... and on Tuesday morning, January 9, 1906, I was on hand with a capable stenographer, ready to begin. Clemens, meantime, had developed a new idea: he would like to add, he said, the new dictations to his former beginnings, completing an autobiography which was to be laid away and remain unpublished for a hundred years. He would pay the stenographer himself, and own the notes, allowing me, of course, free use of them as material for my book. He did not believe that he could follow the story of his life in its order ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... find in the Autobiography of W. J. Stillman that a similar feeling once beset him on seeing this ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... days of Tuskegee Mr. Washington turned naturally and properly to Hampton for anything that was needed, as he so beautifully and repeatedly testifies in his autobiography, Up from Slavery. For a long time the men and women who helped him were from Hampton, more than ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... been urged by my friends to write my autobiography, that at length I have taken up my pen to comply with their wishes. My memory, although I may occasionally become slightly mixed, is still excellent, and having been born in the first year of the present century I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various

... aspects of experience which may serve as bases from which such thought may issue, and to which, after its synthetic insight, it may return. But it is evident that such divisions of philosophy represent in their order, and in the sharpness with which they are sundered, the intellectual autobiography of the individual philosopher. There is but one method by which that which is peculiar either to the individual, or to the special position which he adopts, may be eliminated. Though it is impossible to tabulate ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... words of James "base our lives on doing and being, not on having"; base our lives solidly upon it, so that everything else is secondary. The pleasures of life are well enough in their time, but they must not usurp the chief place in a man's thought.[Footnote: Cf. J. S. Mill, Autobiography, p. 142: "The enjoyments of life are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life."] His first concern must be to keep true, to play ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... adventures, his experiences, and his impressions while he was a cub-pilot are recorded with a combination of precise veracity and abundant humor which makes the earlier chapters of that marvelous book a most masterly fragment of autobiography. The life of a pilot was full of interest and excitement and opportunity, and what young Clemens saw and heard and divined during the years when he was going up and down the mighty river we may read in the pages of 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Pudd'nhead ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... mother having died, the family life was broken up. In "Les Miserables" the early struggles of Marius are described; and this, the author has told us, may be considered autobiography. He has related how the young man lived in a garret; how he would sweep this barren room; how he would buy a pennyworth of cheese, waiting until dusk to get a loaf of bread, and slink home as furtively as if he had stolen it; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... every man's biography is at his own expense. He furnishes not only the facts, but the report. I mean that all biography is autobiography. It is only what he tells of himself that comes to be known ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... I think ... I'm afraid ..." he stopped, abruptly biting his lips. "Oh, well," he went on suddenly in a brighter tone, "there's no need to bother you with all that. It's nothing. I'm a bit done up over this book, I expect. But that's really why I told you that little piece of autobiography—because it will help you to understand the book. The book's come out of all that, and you mightn't have believed that it was me at all—unless I'd ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... and historic interest. In any event, one should visit Twyford, only three miles away, often known as the "queen of the Hampshire villages" and famous for the finest yew tree in England. It is of especial interest to Americans, since Benjamin Franklin wrote his autobiography here while a guest of Dr. Shipley, Vicar of St. Asaph, whose house, a ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... be necessary to go farther into this controversy than to show what a cauldron it was for the family of Dr. Beecher. In his autobiography, Dr. Beecher says, "From the time Unitarianism began to show itself in this country, it was as fire in my bones." After his call to Boston, he writes again, "My mind had been heating, heating, heating. Now I had a chance to strike." The situation that confronted ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... The autobiography which this book contains is that of a man who through the wonderful dealings of Providence has had a most remarkable experience. I have known the writer for about seventeen years, and always most favorably. For a number of years past he ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney

... Welcome as a full autobiography of Plautus would be, in place of such scant and tasteless biographical morsels as we do have, only less welcome, perhaps, would be his own stage directions for his plays, supposing him to have written stage directions and ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... mind. "Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge." Where a man's emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is not necessarily nearer the truth. Says Spencer, in the Preface to his Autobiography:—"In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual nature" (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I., ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... of the nature of an autobiography is supposed to demand an apology to the public. To refuse such a tribute, would be to recognize the justice of the charge, so often brought against our countrymen—of a too great willingness to be made acquainted with the domestic history and ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... (1813-1815). When peace was declared, the poet entered the service of the Prussian state and proved himself a careful and trusted official. Thus, living a busy life, he could write that classic of romantic idleness: Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, The Autobiography of a Good-for-Nothing. ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... south-east of Dumfriesshire. His father was a shepherd, well acquainted with the duties of his profession, and a man of strong though uneducated mind. "My father, while I was yet a child," writes Mr Riddell, in a MS. autobiography, "left Sorbie; but when I had become able to traverse both burn and brae, hill and glen, I frequently returned to, and spent many weeks together in, the vale of my nativity. We had gone, under the same employer, to what pastoral phraseology ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Abbe de Saint-Pierre; 5 Norman Crosses (with Engravings); 6. Duchess of Queensberry and Gay; 7. Dryden and Flecknoe; 8. Legends of the Monastic Orders; 9. T. Lodge and his Works; 10. Birth of the Old Pretender; 11. History of Winchelsea (with Engravings); 12. Autobiography of Mr. Britton; 13. The recent Papal Bull historically considered: with Notes of the Month. Review of New Publications, Literary and Antiquarian Intelligence, Historical Chronicle, and OBITUARY, including ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various

... influences and debate with open doors—intercepts the very possibility of senatorial eloquence. [Footnote: The subject is amusingly illustrated by an anecdote of Goethe, recorded by himself in his autobiography. Some physiognomist, or phrenologist, had found out, in Goethe's structure of head, the sure promise of a great orator. "Strange infatuation of nature!" observes Goethe, on this assurance, "to endow me so richly and liberally for that particular destination ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... the masterpieces of Europe, beginning on the ground floor as the Strozzi Palace, developing into various French castles, and finishing on the top as a Swiss chalet, atrocious as architecture, but amusing as autobiography. All his buildings were more or less reminiscent, and told again in stone the story so often told in words at the Nazionale, for Death was kind and claimed him before he had ceased to be the discoverer to ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... In the "Autobiography of P. T. Barnum," published in 1855, I partly promised to write a book which should expose some of the chief humbugs of the world. The invitation of my friends Messrs. Cauldwell and Whitney of the "Weekly Mercury" caused me to furnish for ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... toss the "Last Leaf" on my probably over-large accumulation of printed pages. What I have set down is in no way an autobiography. It is simply the presentment of the panorama of nearly fourscore momentous years as unrolled before one pair of eyes. Whether the eyes have served their owner well or ill the gentle reader will judge. I hope I ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... the fall of 1852 and began her work in the frame building which had been erected for general meeting purposes. So great was the interest in her Bible classes that even aged people would come many miles to attend. Similar success attended her experiment of an unsectarian church. In her autobiography she tells something of the conditions in the colony while she was there. In their clearings the settlers raised corn, potatoes and other vegetables while a few had put in two or three acres of wheat. Mrs. Haviland's account of the colony is much more favorable ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... painful exigencies. Vienna, Lemberg, Vienna again, Switzerland, everywhere Dr. Pfeiffer sought work, and everywhere found himself baffled by some malignant influence. "Heaven only knows," says Madame Pfeiffer in her autobiography, "what I suffered during eighteen years of my married life; not, indeed, from any ill-treatment on my husband's part, but from poverty and want. I came of a wealthy family, and had been accustomed from my earliest youth to order and ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... Guildhall in London attests its existence there. Moreover, the greatest artists belonged to the guilds, uniting themselves usually by work of the goldsmith, as Benvenuto Cellini so quaintly describes in his naive autobiography. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... Goethe speaks with even warmer feeling than of his mother. This was his sister Cornelia, a year younger than himself, and destined to an unhappy marriage and an early death. Of the many portraits he has drawn in his Autobiography, none is touched with a tenderer hand and with subtler sympathy than that of Cornelia. Goethe does not imply that she permanently influenced his future development; for such influence she possessed neither the force of mind nor of character.[8] But to ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... was suggested by the reading of some extracts from the autobiography of a brilliant lady who had much to tell us about a number of interesting people. There was a quality in that autobiography which seemed to demand parody, and no doubt the autobiographer who cannot wait for posterity and perspective will ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... will; the Governor, too, who had a negative on our laws, held by the same tenure, and with still greater devotedness to it; and, last of all, the royal negative closed the last door to every hope of ameloration.—Autobiography.[131] ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... though his judgments were sometimes narrow-minded and warped by political prejudice. His editions of 'Massinger' (1805), which superseded that of Monck Mason and Davies (1765), of 'Ben Jonson' (1816), of 'Ford' (1827), are valuable. To his translation of 'Juvenal' (1802) is prefixed his autobiography. His translation of 'Persius' appeared in 1821. To Gifford, Byron usually paid the utmost deference. "Any suggestion of yours, even if it were conveyed," he writes to him, in 1813, "in the less tender text of the 'Baviad', or a Monck Mason note to Massinger, would be obeyed." See also ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... composition was wasted. He acquired in the workshop of verse the style that stood him in such good stead in the field of familiar prose. It is because of this hard-won ease of style that readers of English will never grow weary of that epistolary autobiography in which he recounts his maniacal fear that his food has been poisoned; his open-eyed wonder at balloons; the story of his mouse; the cure of the distention of his stomach by Lady Hesketh's gingerbread; the pulling ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... I thought you were anxious for leisure to complete your autobiography. Well, if there are no resignations, I think we have ended ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various

... of literature too much abounds, for a few more such instantly recognised specimens of true but erring and unequal humanity, which are as rare as they are precious. In the unabridged life of Lord Guildford by Roger North, which, with his own most interesting and yet unpublished autobiography, are in my possession in his autograph, are found some additional touches which confirm the general accuracy of the portrait he has sketched of Hale in the work which has been printed. (Vide North's Life of Lord Guildford, by Roscoe, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... us to a contemporary instance. Willis and Hawthorne wrote early, side by side, in "The Token," about 1827, forty years ago. Willis rose at once to notoriety, but Mr. S. G. Goodrich, the editor of the work, states in his autobiography, that Hawthorne's contributions "did not attract the slightest attention." Ten years later, in 1837, these same sketches were collected in a volume, as "Twice-Told Tales"; but it was almost impossible to find a publisher for them, and when published they had no success. I well remember the apathy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... quote from an autobiography of the poet, the original of which is in the possession of one of his surviving friends. We have likewise to acknowledge our obligations to Dr Muschet, of Birkhill, near Stirling, for communicating some interesting letters of Macneill, addressed to his late father. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... silence, lay communion, the hope of ultimate, though perhaps long-deferred reunion—these were his first thoughts. Misgivings could not be helped, would not be denied, but need not be paraded, were to be kept at arm's-length as long as possible. This is the picture presented in the autobiography of these painful and dreary years; and there is every evidence that it is a faithful one. It is conceivable, though not very probable, that such a course might go on indefinitely. It is conceivable ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... a history, a military treatise, an essay, or a scrap of autobiography. It has no more accuracy or literary merit than letters usually possess. So I hope you will not judge it too harshly. My only object is to try and show as truthfully as I can the part played in this monstrous war by a despatch rider during ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... one of the most universal and most eccentric geniuses of his age, declares in his autobiography, that the rage for gambling long entailed upon him the loss of reputation and fortune, and that it retarded his progress in the sciences. 'Nothing,' says he, 'could justify me, unless it was that my love of gaming was less than my horror of privation.' ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... 'eminently happy, and characteristick of his [Reynolds's] easy and placid manners.' Boswell (Dedication of 'Life of Johnson') refers to his 'equal and placid temper.' Cf. also Dean Barnard's verses (Northcote's 'Life of Reynolds', 2nd ed., 1819, i. 220), and Mrs. Piozzi's lines in her 'Autobiography', 2nd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... dear reader, that I shall inflict on you a complete autobiography. It is only the great ones of the earth who are entitled to claim attention to the record of birth and parentage and school-days, etcetera. To trace my ancestry back through "the Conquerors" to Adam, would be presumptuous as well as impossible. Nevertheless, for the sake of aspirants to literary ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... but married an Indian descended from the family of King Philip, the Indian warrior, and the last of the Indian chiefs. His grandmother was the king's granddaughter, as he claimed, and was famous for her personal beauty. He caused his autobiography and religious experience to be published. The original hymn is quite long, and contains some singular ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... uncomfortable to see them all leaning back waiting for me, after their plates had been whisked away, that I took to bolting the rest of my food, and by the time we'd got rid of nine courses in about half an hour I felt qualified to write the autobiography of an anaconda. ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... autobiography is quite worthy of the renowned author. His first attempts at literature, and his career until he stood forth an acknowledged power among the philosophers and ecclesiastical leaders of his native land, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... "The Iliad"; a "Life of Francis of Assisi"; Speke's "Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"; the "Pickwick Papers"; "Mr. Midshipman Easy"; The Verses of Theocritus, in a very old translation; Renan's "Life of Christ"; and the "Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini." The bottom shelf of all was full of books ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... The presence of a man who had pleaded eloquently in English pulpits for contributions to build Lutheran churches in Georgia, and with that eminent success which Benjamin Franklin has noted in a well-known passage in his autobiography, certainly deserved recognition, even apart from Whitefield's services in awakening life in the Church of England and in America. He was present at the examination of the children of St. Michael's Church before ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... 1 vol. The Autobiography. 1 vol. Dissertations and Discussions. 5 vols. Considerations on Representative Government. 1 vol. Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy. 2 vols. On Liberty: The Subjection of Women. Both in 1 vol. Comte's Positive ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... when he isn't dishing out his autobiography is to stand around a race track and bark at ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh

... friends. When such materials exist, there can be no more satisfactory kind of biography than that of introducing the man himself, speaking unreservedly to his most intimate friends on the great events of his life. This is an autobiography, in fact, free from all drawbacks. Here and there that process, it is true, entails a greater fullness of detail than is acceptable to ordinary readers, however highly Bunsen's own friends may value every line of his familiar letters. But general readers may easily pass over letters ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... circumstances appeared to play a large part in this queer autobiography, and saved the necessity of ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell

... autobiography Goethe has revealed to us that his works are fragments of a great confession. Moods of his pre-Weimar storm and stress vibrate in his Iphigenia—feverish unrest, defiance of conventionality, Titanic trust in his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... a long way the best work Mr. Lawson has yet given us. These stories are so good that (from the literary point of view of course) one hopes they are not autobiographical. As autobiography they would be good, as pure fiction they are ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston

... best humor. He sent for a bottle of wine, and filled for Riemer and me; he himself drank Marienbad water. He seemed to have appointed this evening for looking over, with Riemer, the manuscript of the continuation of his autobiography, perhaps in order to improve it here and there, in point of expression. "Let Eckermann stay and hear it too," said Goethe; which words I was very glad to hear, and he then laid the manuscript before Riemer, who began to read, commencing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... in detail the events of my insignificant existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography. I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... Larcom (1826-1893). One of a numerous family, she worked as a child in the Lowell mills, later taught school in Illinois, was one of the editors of Our Young Folks, and wrote a most fascinating autobiography called A New England Girlhood. Several of her poems are still used in schools. The one that follows is, perhaps, the most popular of these. It is semi-dramatic, and the three voices of the poem can be easily discovered. Miss Larcom's ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... deaths and marriages. The "coming man" came and went, being in his turn "temporarily relieved," and consigned to that obscurity which is the Nemesis of major-generals. He is more fortunate, however, than some of his compeers, in experiencing almost at once the double resurrection of autobiography and reappointment. Whether his new career be more or less successful than the old one, the autobiography is at least worth printing, so far as it goes. Had an instalment of it appeared when the siege of Charleston ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... pp. 321-60. These and most of the Chief Justice's other letters which have thus far seen the light of day will be found in J. E. Oster's "Political and Economic Doctrines of John Marshall" (New York, 1914). Here also will be found a copy of Marshall's will, of the autobiography which he prepared in 1818 for Delaplaine's "Repository" but which was never published there, and of his eulogy of his wife. The two principal sources of Marshall's anecdotes are the "Southern Literary Messenger," volume II, p.181 ff., and Henry Howe's "Historical Collections ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... was carried on by him for six-and-thirty years. He claimed to be a special protege of an angel called Salmonaeus, and to have a more than bowing acquaintance with Salmael and Malchidael, the guardian angels of England. Among his works are his autobiography, and his "Observations on the Life and Death of Charles, late King of England." The rest of his effusions are pretentious, mystical, muddle-headed rubbish, half nonsense half knavery, as "The White King's Prophecy," ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... and repeating the things they had read or been told, though you cannot always believe these things yourself. But when Cellini tells you that he saw this or did that, and you find it impossible to believe him, you lose patience with him, and are disposed to doubt everything in his autobiography. Do not forget, then, that Matthew is Holinshed and not Benvenuto. The very first pages of his narrative will put your ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... Columbus, writing bits of autobiography later, says that he took to the sea at fourteen. If true, he did not remain a seafarer constantly, for in 1472-73 he was again helping his father in the weaving or wool- combing business in Genoa. Until ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... material was obviously intended to form the basis for an autobiography that the executors came to the conclusion that it would be a thousand pities to withhold it from the public, and at some future date it is very much hoped to produce a complete life of Miss Macnaughtan ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... than Washington, for the latter "couldn't tell a lie, while he could, but wouldn't" We have endless biographies of Franklin, picturing him in all the public stations of life, but all together they do not equal in popularity his own human autobiography, in which we see him walking down Market Street with a roll under each arm, and devouring a third. And so it seems as if the time had come to put the shadow-boxes of humanity round our historic portraits, not because they are ornamental ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... Problem. (Harper and Brothers.) Under this quaint title, the author of "Alton Locke" has collected into a volume a series of papers formerly contributed to Frazer's Magazine. Not so radical, so fantastic, nor so vigorous as many portions of the "Autobiography of a Tailor," dealing more with religious, and less with social questions, written in a more obscure and uncertain stage of experience, this production is a sparkling effervescing fragment, abounding in passages of singular beauty ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... capable of deep and lasting passion, James Buchanan loved his mother. Among his papers there was found a fragment of an autobiography, which ended in 1816, when the writer was only twenty-five years of age. He says his father was "a kind father, a sincere friend, and an honest and religious man," but on the subject of ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... is dedicated to the Massachusetts Historical Society, who have honored the author with their presidency for eight years past. It is rather an autobiography than a biography, and an autobiography of the most trustworthy kind, 'written accidentally and unconsciously, as it were, in familiar letters or private journals, or upon the records of official service.' Such a Life is the volume before ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... Stanislaus Margaret Gerard, born August 9th, 1855, at Rochsoles House, Lanarkshire, N.B. The following is a brief autobiography of this well-known and popular novelist, with which she has been good enough to supply us: "My father's name was Archibald Gerard. My mother was nee Euphemia Erskine Robison. In 1876, being in a deadly dull Hungarian ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... himself in his 'Diary;' in which, as it has been well observed, he 'unveiled the nakedness of his mind, and displayed himself as a courtly compound of mean compliance and political prostitution.' It may, in passing, be remarked, that few men figure well in an autobiography; and that Cumberland himself, proclaimed by Dr. Johnson to be a 'learned, ingenious, accomplished gentleman,' adding, 'the want of company is an inconvenience, but Mr. Cumberland is a million:' in spite of this eulogium, Cumberland has betrayed in his own autobiography unbounded vanity, worldliness, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... the midst of all this activity she was suddenly struck down by disease of the heart, and her doctors announced that she might die at any moment. She resigned herself to her fate with her usual calm courage, and proceeded to draw up and print her autobiography. Strange to say, she lived for twenty years longer; the Damocles' sword suspended over her head forbore to fall, and as soon as her health was to some extent re-established she resumed her literary labours. Among her ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... comment on this let us turn to the "Autobiography of W. P. Frith R. A." (Chapter xl.):—"A portion of the year ... was spent in the service of the winter Exhibition of Old Masters. My duties took me into strange places.... One of my first visits was paid to a huge mansion in the North.... I visited ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... 'Recollections' in 1830, but the two first cantos were not completed until two years later. The third canto was added in 1835, when the poem was published in the first volume of his 'Curl-Papers' (Papillotes). These recollections, in fact, constitute Jasmin's autobiography, and we are indebted to them for the description we have already given of the poet's ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... sight, they bear the semblance of beasts, reptiles, or birds, in shapes unusual or distorted. [ The figure of a large bird is perhaps the most common,—as, for example, the good spirit of Rock Island: "He was white, with wings like a swan, but ten times larger."—Autobiography of Blackhawk, 70. ] There are other manitous without local habitation, some good, some evil, countless in number and indefinite in attributes. They fill the world, and control the destinies of men,—that ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... till I laid down my head on the table and sobbed aloud. It was then that somehow the idea of Benvenuto Cellini [Footnote: Benvenuto Cellini: a famous Italian sculptor and worker in gold and silver. Born in 1500(?) died in 1571. His autobiography is one of the most famous of Italian classics. The Perseus of Cellini stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, and represents the helmeted hero holding up the severed head of Medusa.] sitting up all night watching his Perseus in the furnace came into my head, and ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... German philosophic style, or was restrained by the consciousness that he must write in a lingo that could be translated into French. These pieces were written for bread and bread alone in the terrible years of starvation, 1840-41. An End [of a German Musician] in Paris is full of autobiography, and intensely interesting on that account; it is interesting, too, because of its display of the naive arrogance which leads Germans to believe the whole world was made for Germans. This German musician, for instance, arrives in Paris, where scores ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... his turn at autobiography. He told rather whimsically of his three months' experiences at the tail of the juvenile whirligigs, and his auditors listened to them with mild smiles. He ventured upon numerous glowing parentheses about Julia, and they at least did not say that they did not want to know her. They heard ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... even farcical scenes, 'Die Meistersinger' is in fact not so much a comedy as a satire, with a vein of wise and tender sentiment running through it. It has also to a certain extent the interest of autobiography. It is not difficult to read in the story of Walther's struggles against the prejudice and pedantry of the Mastersingers a suggestion of Wagner's own life-history, and if Beckmesser represents the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... amours,—that with Sergius Soltikoff, which was the first, (if we may be sure that she had a first,)—and which seems clearly to have been elevated, if not purified, by a true and deep affection. That it was so appears not by any protestation or even calm assertion of her own, which in an autobiography might be reasonably doubted, but from the unstudied tenderness of her allusions to him; from the fact, which indirectly appears, that he first cooled towards her, and the pang—not of wounded vanity—which this gave her; and yet more unmistakably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... point. Fitted with painful tightness into an old wooden arm-chair, before a worm-eaten oak table in an upstairs room of a four-roomed cottage with a roof of moss-grown tiles, Michaelis was writing night and day in a shaky, slanting hand that "Autobiography of a Prisoner" which was to be like a book of Revelation in the history of mankind. The conditions of confined space, seclusion, and solitude in a small four-roomed cottage were favourable to his inspiration. It was like being in prison, except that one was never ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... R. Leslie, his room-mate and devoted friend, who afterwards became one of the best of the American painters of those days. In his autobiography Leslie says:— ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... Germany as far as the borders of Poland without ever learning to read, until in his eighteenth year, he received for the first time better instruction in Schlettstadt and afterwards in Zurich. He has left us a picture of his student-life in an autobiography, extracts from which are found in a number of works. It can easily be imagined how several thousand scholars of this roving cast, who all subsisted on alms, should frequently meet together in one town. The younger ones, called archers, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... a woman such as this? She had no morals, and her manners were outrageous. The love she felt was the love of a she-wolf. Fourteen biographies of her have been written, besides her own autobiography, which was called The Story of a Penitent, and which tells less about her than any of the other books. Her beauty was undeniable. Her courage was the blended courage of the Celt, the Spaniard, and the Moor. Yet all that one can say of her was said by the elder Dumas when ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... Pastures, or strolling along the beaches to talk with old sailors and fishermen. His tramps along the Manchester and Beverly shores or from Marblehead to Nahant were productive of such delicate tracings as "Footprints by the Sea-shore," or the dream-autobiography of "The Village Uncle." "Grudge me not the day," he says, in the former sketch, "that has been spent in seclusion, which yet was not solitude, since the great sea has been my companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and the wind has told me his secrets, and ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... and in the articles, of rare merit, among which may be cited (not as exceptionally good, but as typical of his strong points) the striking picture of his own youthful feeling toward the Church of England contained in the "Chapter of Autobiography," and the refined criticism of "Robert Elsmere," published in 1888. Almost the last thing he wrote, a pamphlet on the Greek and Cretan question, published in the spring of 1897, has all the force and cogency of his best days. Two things were never wanting to ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce

... The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson is a good stout volume, full of portraits and interest from beginning to end, forming an important addition to the theatrical history of the day. The Baron drinks to his old friend, the greatest Rip that ever lived. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various

... told him, qualifying the grossness of the reality by her own shrewd humor; part he read between the lines of the autobiography. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Lincoln's statement in the Autobiography that he had picked up the little advance he had made upon his early education, or rather lack of education, is altogether too modest. It is known that after his term in Congress he studied and mastered geometry; and, like Washington, he early ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln

... body. Beauty and virginity are insisted on in various passages in the magical papyri (see Abt op. cit., p. 185) as necessary in the boy through whom the god is to speak. Cp. also Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography (Symond's ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... writer; his work includes poems, romances, novels, and dramas. 'Vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ocean' (From the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean: 1882) is a description of his lecturing tour to the United States the year before. His autobiography, 'Erinnerungen aus Meinem Leben' (Recollections of my Life), gives interesting glimpses into his eventful career. His mind was more receptive than creative, and this, combined with his great technical skill and his quick intuition, fitted him peculiarly to be a translator and adapter. His translation ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... it. Now my morality is all fibre; you never met with such fibrous morality. What did he do with the fibre out of his? Did he pawn it? did he sell it? did he give it away? We should like to know all about it—is it in his autobiography? Did he write an autobiography? If he didn't, why didn't he? We prefer all our great men to write autobiographies. We like to be well up in them, and we think it would throw a great deal of light on the study of psychology, and gratify ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... replied she, with an amused smile, "don't you know the ridiculous story that Mr. Wemyss Reid, in his charming biography of my father, tells, and which, indeed, I believe was first told by Sir Henry Taylor, in his autobiography? I will tell it you. You know my father was acquainted with everybody, and his greatest pleasure in life was to introduce the notoriety of the moment to the leading members of English Society. On the particular occasion on which this story was told, it is alleged that somebody ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... novelist can only look within for effective aid. Almost solely by arranging and modifying what he has felt and seen, and scarcely at all by inventing, can he accomplish his end. An inquiry into the career of any first-class novelist invariably reveals that his novels are full of autobiography. But, as a fact, every good novel contains far more autobiography than any inquiry could reveal. Episodes, moods, characters of autobiography can be detected and traced to their origin by critical acumen, but the intimate autobiography that runs through each page, vitalising it, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... add to the fee of the authorized and numbered guide who took possession of us as soon as we got out of our basket and led us unresisting to a waiting bullock sled. He invited himself into it, and gave himself the best of characters in the autobiography into which he wove his scanty instruction concerning the objects we passed. A bullock sled is not of such blithe progress as a toboggan, but it is very comfortable, and it is of an Oriental and litter-like dignity, with its calico cushions and curtains. One could not well use it in New York, but ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... wrote without rules.' He ended at last in the common sink of all such writers, a political newspaper, to which he was recommended by his friend Arnall, and received a small pittance for pay.—P. B. Franklin seems to have thought that his friend Ralph was alluded to here. See his Autobiography. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... rewrote it from memory. She sued him for damages, and the English courts ordered him to pay to his former hostess $50,000. But he evaded payment by staying in France. Mrs. Weldon was also a composer, and she had edited in 1875 Gounod's autobiography and certain of his essays with a preface by herself. The lawsuit as usual exposed to public curiosity many things both would have preferred to keep secret, and was a pitiful finish generally to what promised to be a most congenial alliance. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... in this volume is as surely an autobiography as if that announcement were a part of the title: and it also has the peculiar and significant distinction of being in some sort the biography of every man and woman who enters seriously upon the ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... I am going to write, it is my intention to adhere rigidly to the truth—this will be bona fide an autobiography—and, as the public like novelty, an autobiography without an iota of fiction in the whole of it, will be the greatest novelty yet offered to its fastidiousness. As many of the events which will be my province to record, are singular and even startling, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... Indians who had held him captive and who pinioned him to the ground while they dug their ore, never allowing him to see where they worked, but using him to help carry the mined product. David Crockett in his autobiography tells the story of "Deaf and Dumb Jimmy" but he places the scene in Kentucky, making probably the same mistake in the location of the state-line boundary ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan

... obligation, if not Divine command. David's impulsive nature and self-indulgent habits filled her with overwhelming sorrow and dismay. She could not understand the rapid changes of mood, the disordered views, the storm and violence which are characteristic of every artist whose work is a form of autobiography rather than a presentment ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... Physician," the "Diary of an Ennuyee," the "Diary of a Lady of Rank," and Heaven knows how many other diaries besides! but who has ever heard of, or saw, the "Diary of a Lord Mayor,—that day-book, or blotter, as it may be commercially termed, of a gigantic mind? Who has ever perused the autobiography of the Lama of Guildhall, Cham of Cripplegate, Admiral of Fleet Ditch, Great Turtle-hunter and Herod of Michaelmas geese? We will take upon ourselves to answer—not one! It was reserved for PUNCH to give to his dear friends, the public, the first and only extract which has ever been made ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various

... wrote while still working in the delicatessen store are indelibly stamped with the pathos of his environment—"Thoughts in Vinegar," a bitter satire on bohemianism—"Three Little Pickles," an autobiography of the Barrymores as children and "The lonely Anchovy," a whimsical fantasy which if we are to believe Town Topics made Sir ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... a letter which John Brown wrote concerning his boyhood to Henry L. Stearns, as the finest bit of autobiography of the nineteenth century.[Footnote: North American Review, April 1860.] It is in fact almost the only literature of the kind that we possess. A frequent difficulty that parents find in dealing with their children is, that they have wholly forgotten the sensations and impressions of ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... to which he requested Wilson's attention was the private autobiography, written expressly to give his own story of all the facts of the marriage ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... hurried, fragmentary words. Assurances that all could be made right entreaties for gentleness and patience—revelations of her own inmost heart as a wife, far too sacred for the ears of Letty Tressady—little phrases and snatches of autobiography steeped in an exquisite experience: the nature Letty had rained her blows upon, kept nothing back, gave her all its best. How irrelevant much of it was!—chequered throughout by those oblivions, and optimisms, and foolish hopes by which such a nature ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition. Autobiography, Notes on Virginia, Parliamentary Mannual, Official Papers, Messages and Addresses, and other writings Official ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson

... This autobiography carries the reader from 1837, the year of Dr. Ebers's birth in Berlin, to 1863, when An Egyptian Princess was finished. The subsequent events of his life were outwardly calm, as befits the existence of a great scientist ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... ever really fight Big Ben Brain or Bryan in Hyde Park, or is it all a fantasy of the artist's imagining? We shall never know. Borrow called his Lavengro 'An Autobiography' at one stage of its inception, although he wished to repudiate the autobiographical nature of his story at another. Dr. Knapp in his anxiety to prove that Borrow wrote his own memoirs in Lavengro and Romany Rye tells us that he had no creative faculty—an absurd proposition. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... the major premises, but why look to the work of prose fiction as the main instrument in this necessary process of, so to speak, sympathising humanity together? Cannot this be done far more effectively through biography and autobiography, for example? Isn't there the lyric; and, above all, isn't there the play? Well, so far as the stage goes, I think it is a very charming and exciting form of human activity, a display of actions and surprises of the most moving and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... a copy of your autobiography direct to Eilsen (Buckeburg). I can make good use of it in connection with the pamphlet which is to be published (in French) in June by Brockhaus. If your article on the Zurich theatre has appeared, send ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... as universally admitted as his direct and lucid style is generally admired. His account of his own life and career is a masterpiece in this category of literature, for it is written with blended modesty and naivete. In many passages of this "Autobiography" he does not hesitate to assume great credit for his own courage, probity, and skill, but in each case the justification is manifest, for he constantly refers to the tortuous and treacherous machinations ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... In themselves, he would have said, the facts of a man's life are meaningless, chaotic, discordant: it is the poet's office to put them into the crucible of his spirit and give them forth as a significant and harmonious whole. The "poetry" of Goethe's autobiography—by far the best of autobiographies in the German language—must not be taken to imply concealment, perversion, substitution, or anything of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... course as a serial in one of the "great reviews," and within a few weeks of its publication as a book thirty thousand copies had been sold. The sale continues more actively than ever. Marguerite Audoux lives precisely as she lived before. She is writing a further instalment of her pseudonymous autobiography, and there is no apparent reason why this new instalment should not be even better than ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux

... answering not so much to his last remark as to the whole trend of his autobiography, "I suppose you are happy in this way of life, since you seem to prefer it. But it would be terribly monotonous ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... the Messieurs de Port Royal, which Gibbon praises so highly in his charming autobiography, and which has passed through several editions in England within the present century, we are taught, that, "though the moods [in Greek] are not to be rejected entirely, yet their signification is sometimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... the fragments (which may almost be said to take the form of an autobiography) was the son of one of the twelve kings, who by his genius and worth became "Tootmanyoso," or supreme Ruler. In the planet his name is mentioned with even more reverence than, by different peoples, is paid to that of Zoroaster, Solon, Lycurgus, or Alfred; but he has this peculiarity ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... marvellous conversion under his ministration is recorded by Brother Cartwright in the autobiography written in the closing years of his life. At one time in crossing a stream, he was deeply offended by the profanity of the boatman. The kindly admonition and the gentle rebuke of the minister apparently added ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... jealous monkeys always greedy for food, females and bright stones. It is true that they know how to deck out their desires with a somewhat brilliant and delusive ideology, but it is easy for an expert to recognize the instinct beneath the thought. Every doctrine is an autobiography. Every philosophy demands a diagnosis. Tell me the state of your digestion, and I shall tell you the state of ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... Wanley' was written and published; Keene had the glory of revising the manuscript. It made a pamphlet of thirty-two pages, and was in reality an autobiography. It presented the ideal working man; the author stood as a type for ever of the noble possibilities inherent in his class. Written of course in the first person, it contained passages of monumental self-satisfaction. ...
— Demos • George Gissing



Words linked to "Autobiography" :   memoir, life story, life history, biography, autobiographer, life, autobiographical



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