The men who make, or take, the lives of poets and scholars, always complain that these lives are barren of incidents.
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion (1839). copy citation

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Author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source Hyperion
Topic complaining life
Date 1839
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5436/5436-h/5436-h.htm

Context

“but thank God that he is a poet; and everywhere be true to himself, and to `the vision and the faculty divine' he feels within him." "But, at any rate, a city life is most eventful," continued the Baron. "The men who make, or take, the lives of poets and scholars, always complain that these lives are barren of incidents. Hardly a literary biography begins without some such apology, unwisely made. I confess, however, that it is not made without some show of truth; if, by incidents, we mean only those startling events, which suddenly turn aside the stream of Time, and change the world's history in an hour.” source