William Mathews
The facts available for William Mathews are quite thin — they confirm his dates, his occupations as a journalist and writer, and his presence in several library catalogues, but nothing more specific such as publications, awards, or career events.
Applying the word-count rule (cut the target rather than invent), here is a short biography that says only what the facts support:
Born in 1818, William Mathews spent his working life as both a journalist and a writer. The dual roles suggest a career that moved between the press and longer-form written work, though the specific outlets, titles, and subjects he devoted himself to are not recorded here.
Mathews died in 1909, having lived more than ninety years. His name appears in a number of major bibliographic catalogues, including records held by the Library of Congress, the German National Library, and the Open Library, where his birth and death dates are confirmed. The Library of Congress authorized form of his name is "Mathews, William, 1818-1909."
Those catalogue entries are the clearest lasting trace of his work — evidence that libraries across more than one country considered his output significant enough to index and preserve. Beyond that, the record kept here does not extend to the particular books, articles, or arguments that filled the nine decades of his life, leaving the shape of his career, for now, a matter for further research rather than confident summary.
Quotes by William Mathews
The first law of success is concentration - to bed all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor the left.
![[A]s if it were not the masterful will which subjugates the forces of nature to be the genii of the lamp... that forces a life-thought into a pregnant word or phrase, and sends it ringing through the ages!](https://lakl0ama8n6qbptj.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/quotes/quote-2116424.png)
[A]s if it were not the masterful will which subjugates the forces of nature to be the genii of the lamp... that forces a life-thought into a pregnant word or phrase, and sends it ringing through the ages!
It cannot be too often repeated that it is not helps, but obstacles, not facilities, but difficulties that make men.
No man ever sailed over exactly the same route that another sailed over before him; every man who starts on the ocean of life arches his sails to an untried breeze.
So powerfully does fortune appear to sway the destinies of men, putting a silver spoon into one man's mouth, and a wooden one into another's, that some of the most sagacious of men, as Cardinal Mazarin and Rothschild, seem to have been inclined to regard luck as the first element of worldly success; experience, sagacity, energy, and enterprise as nothing, if linked to an unlucky star.
As with the acquisition, so with the use of money; they way in which a man spends it is often one of the surest tests of character.
All maxims have their antagonist maxims; proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half truth