Biographies Quotes - Page 19

• For three days now this angel, almost too heavenly for earth has been my fiancée ... Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant colours. Upon his engagement to Johanne Osthof of Brunswick; they married 9 Oct 1805.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Spring, Angel, Science

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• Education in my family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'être. Virtually all of our aunts and uncles had Ph.D.s in science or engineering, and it was taken for granted that the next generation of Chu's were to follow the family tradition. When the dust had settled, my two brothers and four cousins collected three MDs, four Ph.D.s and a law degree. I could manage only a single advanced degree.

  Steven Chu

  Brother, Cousin, Uncles

  Steven Chu - Biographical, www.nobelprize.org. 1997.

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• If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.

  Jonathan Swift

  Science, Gulliver, World

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• In describing the honourable mission I charged him with, M. Pernety informed me that he made my name known to you. This leads me to confess that I am not as completely unknown to you as you might believe, but that fearing the ridicule attached to a female scientist, I have previously taken the name of M. LeBlanc in communicating to you those notes that, no doubt, do not deserve the indulgence with which you have responded.

  Sophie Germain

  Believe, Taken, Science

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• I wrote a novel called "Blonde," which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography. That uses the material as if it were myth - that Marilyn Monroe is like this mythical figure in our culture.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Blonde, Bakers, Culture

  "Writer Joyce Carol Oates". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. May 8, 2013.

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• I read a lot of biographies and books with an African background.

  Wilbur Smith

  Book, Backgrounds

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• I'm interested in the truth, and unauthorized biographies are not. Yes, I would like to correct those errors someday.

  Barbra Streisand

  Errors, Someday

  "Barbra Streisand: Dream House Interview" by James Reginato, www.harpersbazaar.com. November 22, 2010.

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• She [Chien-Shiung Wu] is a slave driver. She is the image of the militant woman so well known in Chinese literature as either empress or mother.

  Emilio G. Segre

  Mother, Science, Chinese

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• Perhaps the earliest memories I have are of being a stubborn, determined child. Through the years my mother has told me that it was fortunate that I chose to do acceptable things, for if I had chosen otherwise no one could have deflected me from my path. ... The Chairman of the Physics Department, looking at this record, could only say 'That A- confirms that women do not do well at laboratory work'. But I was no longer a stubborn, determined child, but rather a stubborn, determined graduate student. The hard work and subtle discrimination were of no moment.

  Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

  Mother, Children, Memories

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• For no sooner had I begun to read this great work [Frasier, The Golden Bough ], than I became immersed in it and enslaved by it. I realized then that anthropology, as presented by Sir James Frazer, is a great science, worthy of as much devotion as any of her elder and more exact sister studies, and I became bound to the service of Frazerian anthropology.

  Bronislaw Malinowski

  Science, Golden, Study

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• My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the 'Origin', was, 'How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!'

  Thomas Huxley

  Stupid, Science, Reflection

  "On the Reception of the 'Origin of Species' " (1888)

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• My lectures were highly esteemed, but my operations less thought of, so that I am of opinion that my operations rather kept down my practice, than increased it.

  Astley Cooper

  Science, Practice, Lectures

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• Maybe I was young and 'cute' (after all, I was only twenty then), but I've learned over the years that when you put white lab coats on chemists, they all look alike!

  Gertrude B. Elion

  Cute, Science, Years

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• In the old days, they killed the messenger who brought the bad news... a Cassandra is never popular in her time.

  Alice Stewart

  Science, News, Messengers

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• It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to love and a time to die - and when my skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Running, Science, Acceptance

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, p.478, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It was eerie. I saw myself in that machine. I never thought my work would come to this. Upon seeing a distorted image of his face, reflected on the inside cylindrical surface of the bore while inside an MRI (magnetic-resonance-imaging) machine-a device made possible by his early physical researches on nuclear magnetic resonance (1938).

  Isidor Isaac Rabi

  Science, Eerie, Nuclear

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• John looked ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter.

  John Arbuthnot

  Science, Pairs, Cheeks

  John Arbuthnot (2006). “History of John Bull”, p.83, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Like thousands of other boys, I had a little chemical laboratory in our cellar and think that some of our friends thought me a bit crazy.

  Linus Pauling

  Crazy, Science, Boys

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• The reason I moved to Nashville was because I was reading biographies of a lot of my country music heroes, and I thought it would be better to actually go where the history was, as opposed to just reading about it.

  Lindi Ortega

  Country, Reading, Hero

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• The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness. But Jean Rhys, in her biography, is read as borderline; Anaïs Nin is borderline; Djuna is borderline; etc. etc. Borderline personality disorder being an overwhelmingly gendered diagnosis. I write in Heroines: “The charges of borderline personality disorder are the same charges against girls writing literature, I realize - too emotional, too impulsive, no boundaries."

  Kate Zambreno

  Girl, Writing, Greatness

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Kate Zambreno". Interview with Gina Frangello, therumpus.net. November 18, 2012.

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• A photograph is a biography of a moment.

  Art Shay

  Moments, Photograph

  "Photographs tell story of decades-long romance". Interview with Dean Reynolds, www.cbsnews.com. February 13, 2014.

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• in the newspapers I read a biography about an American. He left his whole huge fortune to factories and for the positive sciences, his skeleton to the students at the academy there, and his skin to make a drum so as to have the American national anthem drummed on it day and night.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Night, Skeletons, Skins

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• Your biography becomes your biology. This biography includes the totality of your choices, the things you feed your body - you thoughts, your actions, your food - the thing you feed your life.

  Caroline Myss

  Choices, Body, Action

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• Biography is the mesh through which real life escapes.

  Tom Stoppard

  Real, Real Life, Mesh

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• A biography should be a dissection and demonstration of how a particular human being was made and worked.

  H. G. Wells

  Made, Should, Demonstration

  H. G. Wells (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells”, p.16701, Delphi Classics

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