Reading Biographies Quotes

Read obituaries. They are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives.

I've just finished reading some of my early papers, and you know, when I'd finished I said to myself, 'Rutherford, my boy, you used to be a damned clever fellow.' (1911)

I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that's what I wanted to do.

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

Read no less than ½ hour a day or listen to audiobooks while in the car or cleaning the house. Biographies of great people taught me, as I said, that even eminent people fail but keep getting up.

Usually I read biographies of interesting people.

I am not attracted to novels - make-believe, or recreations of what people think life should be.

Sometimes I read a biography of some tempestuous artist and find myself longing for fireworks! booze! bloody fights!; I do think that life must be so much more thrilling when you're actively miserable.

A raznochinets needs no memory—it is enough for him to tell of the books he has read, and his biography is done.

Reading any collection of a man's quotations is like eating the ingredients that go into a stew instead of cooking them together in the pot. You eat all the carrots, then all the potatoes, then the meat. You won't go away hungry, but it's not quite satisfying. Only a biography, or autobiography, gives you the hot meal.

Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science.

I read a lot. I especially read memoirs and biographies. It's very helpful when you're thinking about what's possible and what exists in human behavior; if it exists out there then it can exist on the stage. I really try to go to a lot of concerts. A lot of live events. I just try to keep my ears really, really open.

On the other hand, when I give it closer thought, I realize I'm not enough of a dictator to conduct an orchestra because it requires a pretty awful person. When you read these biographies of famous conductors, they are all awful people who fail in their private relationships.

During my second year at Edinburgh [1826-27] I attended Jameson's lectures on Geology and Zoology, but they were incredible dull. The sole effect they produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology.

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

I enjoy reading biographies because I want to know about the people who messed up the world.

I can find my biography in every fable that I read.

I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy.

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

The reality is, if you go to the library and read biographies, thousands of people have changed, radically changed. St. Augustine was one of them. He lived a terrible a life for the first 33 years, and then he radically changed.

Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.

I love reading - inspirational books, leadership books, biographies.

I exercise a lot and put on my audio book. Even If you would offer me a million dollars for my iPod I wouldn't give it to you, because I have some great things on it.

If all history is only an amplification of biography, the history of science may be most instructively read in the life and work of the men by whom the realms of Nature have been successively won.

The pleasure of reading biography, like that of reading letters, derives from the universal hunger to penetrate other lives.

I like to read biographies of authors that I love, like Richard Yates.

I also like to see what non-fiction authors are out there. My bible is Something Happened. It's one of the greatest books I've ever read. But if I don't read a Dostoevsky soon I'm going to kill myself.

[Herschel and Humboldt] stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science. No one or a dozen other books influenced me nearly so much as these two. I copied out from Humboldt long passages about Teneriffe and read them aloud on one of [my walking excursions].

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn't give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

[Judge and Jury] is outstanding. I have learned more about the history of baseball, true history, than from anything I have ever read or heard about. [It's] research and documentation clarifies so many of the personalities and events that took place before 'my time' in the game. Jacques Barzun's quote: 'Whoever would know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball' should be supplanted by [this] biography of Landis.

My father loved biographies. He loved the true tales of interesting people that were shaping our culture. I get why he dug Vanity Fair. You feel smarter, somehow, for reading it.

My reading is always about musical biographies. I have an innate interest and passion for that.

There's the typical books, Moby Dick and, I guess in my adult life I began to read biographies more than fiction. I started to want to relate to other people's lives, things that had really happened.

I seldom read anything that is not of a factual nature because I want to invest my time wisely in the things that will improve my life. Don't misunderstand; there is nothing wrong with reading purely for the joy of it. Novels have their place, but biographies of famous men and women contain information that can change lives.

I read everything, but generally more fact than fiction - especially autobiographies and biographies. I've read 'Long Walk to Freedom' by Nelson Mandela at least twice on holiday. Every time, I'm totally awed by his vision, strength and forgiveness. I feel honoured to have got to know him and his wonderful wife Graca over the years.