Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.

Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

There is but one way left to save a classic; to give up revering him and use him for our own salvation.

Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.

Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.

Biography is a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.

Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.

Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.

The cynic a parasite of civilization lives by denying it for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail.

In order to be enchanted we must be above all capable of seeing another person simply opening ones eyes will not do.

When you are fed up with the troublesome present take your gun whistle for your dog and go out to the mountain.

One does not hunt in order to kill on the contrary one kills in order to have huntedIf one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would refuse it. What he is after is having to win it to conquer the surly brute through

The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man.

An obsession is intrusive because it does not require a permit to walk into the brain.

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality... the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

All we are given are possibilities to make ourselves one thing or another.

A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation.

The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history - its mass appeal.

Meditation on any theme, if positive and honest, inevitably separates him who does the meditating from the opinion prevailing around him, from that which ... can be called 'public' or 'popular' opinion.

We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its urgency, 'here and now' without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.

To wonder is to begin to understand.

Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.

We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

I'm an avid biography reader.

Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.

I have had the unfortunate experience of having someone write an unauthorised biography of me. Half of it is lies and the other half is badly written. My feeling is that if I'm going to write my life story, I ought to have my life first.

I became quite taken over by Johnson's personality at some points while writing the biography, and since I went straight on to The Closed Circle afterwards, I did sometimes feel I could hear him whispering in my ear while I was working on it.

I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man. I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives.

I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.

I had no expectation that the Prince would offer me the unprecedented and unfettered access to the original and entirely untapped sources on which this biography is based.

This is the best biography by me I have ever read.

I read everything: fiction, history, science, mathematics, biography, travel.

The Holocaust is a central event in many people's lives, but it also has become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it. Besides, in Israel, everyone carries a biography deep inside him.

Perfect objectivity is always impossible, no matter who writes a person's biography.

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

I am a huge admirer of Elizabeth I, and this intriguing biography gives a wonderful picture of the era.

Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.

It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.

The art of biography is different from geography. Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps.

Mills insisted that a sociologist's proper subject was the intersection of biography and history.

I'm narrating the television series Biography. I'm still involved in my music - I have a new album out. I have an animated project in development. I'm writing a lot of things and you never know if one of them is going to become a six or seven year project.