Augustus John Cuthbert Hare

“ My story is a very long one, and though only, as Sir C. Bowen would have called it, “a ponderous biography on nobody,” is told in great—most people will say in far too much—detail. But to me it seems as if it were in the petty details, not in the great results, that the real interest of every existence lies. I think, also, though it may be considered a strange thing to say, that the true picture of a whole life—at least an English life—has never yet been painted, and certainly all the truth of such a picture must come from its delicate touches. ”

“ Still, when from middle life one overlooks one’s youth as one would a plain divided into different fields from a hill-top, when “la vérité s’est fait jour,” one can discern the faulty lines and trace the mistakes which lead to them, but one cannot even then see the difficulties and perplexities which caused inevitable errors of judgment in those who could not see the end when they were thinking about the beginning. ”

“ The long period of sickness and suffering, which others may have fancied to be trying, only endeared her to me a thousandfold, and since the sweet eyes closed and the gentle voice was hushed for ever in November 1870, each solitary year has only seemed like another page in an unfinished appendix.
I once heard a lady say that “biographies are either lives or stuffed animals,” and there is always a danger of their being only the latter. ”