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1 " Elder Maxwell on Wintry DoctrinesElder Maxwell said that “if we are serious about our discipleship Jesus will eventually request each of us to do those very things which are most difficult for us to do.”This was what he came to call the wintry doctrine at the funeral of a young father in 1996 he put it this way “There are in the gospel warm and cuddly doctrines and then there are some that are just outright wintry doctrines… one of them frankly is that we cannot approach real consecration without passing through appropriate clinical experiences because we don’t achieve consecration in the abstract. … sometimes therefore the best people have the worst experiences… because they are the most ready to learn.” (Bruce C. Hafen, The Story of A Disciple’s Life: Preparing the Biography of Neal A. Maxwell, p. 14) "
― Neal A. Maxwell
2 " If you go through the biography of any famous personality you idolize you are sure to see the how the words ‘I can’ and ‘I believe’ played a very vital role in their fame. "
― Stephen Richards , Be First: Achieve Every Dream
3 " When I Read the Book" When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life,Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.) "
4 " History is: Fables agreed upon - Voltaire The biography of a few stout and earnest persons - Ralph Waldo Emerson A vast Mississippi of falsehood - Matthew Arnold A confused heap of facts - Lord Chesterfield A cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man - "
5 " Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written. "
6 " What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written. "
― Mark Twain
7 " A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living': so too with the biography of that self. And just as lives don't stay still, so life-writing can't be fixed and finalised. Our ideas are shifting about what can be said, our knowledge of human character is changing. The biographer has to pioneer, going 'ahead of the rest of us, like the miner's canary, testing the atmosphere, detecting falsity, unreality, and the presence of obsolete conventions'. So, 'There are some stories which have to be retold by each generation'. She is talking about the story of Shelley, but she could be talking about her own life-story. (Virginia Woolf, p. 11) "
― , Virginia Woolf
8 " It seems to me that someone must surely take the hint and write the life of Miss McGeeney, the woman who wrote the biography of the man who wrote the biography of the man who wrote the biography of the man who wrote the biography of Boswell. "
― Nathanael West , The Dream Life of Balso Snell
9 " No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men. "