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Life Quotes Biography

Source (Google.com.pk)
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
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1,289. Biography
"Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature, is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously diminished."
Johnson: Addison (Lives of the Poets)
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1,294. Biography
"The necessity of complying with times and of sparing persons is the great impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent monuments and records; but Lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever. What is known can seldom be immediately told, and when it might be told it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, the nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of conduct are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice, obstinacy, frolick, and folly, however they might delight in the description, should be silently forgotten than that by wanton merriment and unseasonable detection a pang should be given to a widow, a daughter, a brother, or a friend."
Johnson: Addison (Lives of the Poets)
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1,329. Biography; Influence
"It is particularly the duty of those who consign illustrious names to posterity, to take care lest their readers be misled by ambiguous examples. That writer may be justly condemned as an enemy to goodness, who suffers fondness or interest to confound right with wrong, or to shelter the faults which even the wisest and best have committed from that ignominy which guilt ought always to suffer, and with which it should be more deeply stigmatized when dignified by its neighbourhood to uncommon worth, since we shall be in danger of beholding it without abhorrence, unless its turpitude be laid open, and the eye secured from the deception of surrounding splendour."
Johnson: Rambler #164 (October 12, 1751)
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1,759. Biography; History
"He that records transactions in which himself was engaged, has not only an opportunity of knowing innumerable particulars which escape spectators, but has his natural powers exalted by that ardour which always rises at the remembrance of our own importance, and by which every man is enabled to relate his own actions better than another's."
Johnson: Idler #65 (July 14, 1759)
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1,793. Biography
"Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to te purposes of life."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
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1,797. Biography; Moral Instruction
"The mischievous consequences of vice and folly, of irregular desires and predominant passions, are best discovered by those relations which are levelled with the general surface of life, which tell not how any man became great, but how he was made happy; not how he lost the favour of his prince, but how he became discontented with himself."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
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1,798. Biography
"Those relations are ... commonly of most value in which the writer tells his own story. He that recounts the life of another, commonly dwells most upon conspicuous events, lessens the familiarity of his tale to increase its dignity, shews his favourite at a distance, decorated and magnified like the ancient actors in their tragick dress, and endeavours to hide the man that he may produce a hero. But if it be true, which was said by a French prince, 'that no man was a hero to the servants of his chamber,' it is equally true, that every man is yet less a hero to himself."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
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1,799. Biography
"The writer of his own life has at least the first qualification of an historian, the knowledge of the truth; and thought it may be plausibly objected that his temptations to disguise it are equal to his opportunities of knowing it, yet I cannot but think that impartiality may be expected with equal confidence from him that relates the passage of his own life, as from him that delivers the transactions of another."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
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1,800. Biography
"Love of virtue will animate panegyrick, and hatred of wickedness embitter censure."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
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1,861. Biography; Writing
"It very seldom happens to man that his business is his pleasure. What is done from necessity is so often to be done when against the present inclination, and so often fills the mind with anxiety, that an habitual dislike steals upon us, and we shrink involuntarily from the remembrance of our task. This is the reason why almost everyone wishes to quit his employment; he does not like another state, but is disgusted with his own.

"From this unwillingness to perform more than is required of that which is commonly performed with reluctance, it proceeds that few authors write their own lives. Statesmen, courtiers, ladies, generals, and seamen, have given to the world their own stories, and the events with which their different stations have made them acquainted. They retired to the closet as to a place of quiet and amusement, and pleased themselves with writing, because they could lay down the pen whenever they were weary. But the author, however conspicuous, or however important, either in the publick eye or in his own, leaves his life to be related by his successors, for he cannot gratify his vanity but by sacrificing his case."
Johnson: Idler #102 (March 29, 1760)
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1,864. Biography; Humanity; Writing
It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no matter for narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs shuld not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.
Johnson: Idler #102 (March 29, 1760)
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1,865. Biography; Reading; Writing
Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.

Johnson: Idler #102 (March 29, 1760)

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart

Life Quotes For Her For Him For Girlfriend And Sayings Tumblr For Him Form The Heart For Her Form The Heart