Who said “Show me a character whose life arouses my curiosity, and my flesh begins crawling with…”?

“Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.”

“History is the essence of innumerable biographies.”

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

“The immense majority of human biographies are a gray transit between domestic spasm and oblivion.”

“There ain't nothing that breaks up homes, country, and nations like somebody publishing their memoirs.”

“Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain.”

“A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.”

“A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.”

“There is, of course, a gold mine or a buried treasure on every mortgaged homestead. Whether the farmer ever digs for it or not, it is there, haunting his daydreams when the burden of debt is most unbearable.”