fiction

🇦🇺William Shakespeare

Literature

English Renaissance

1948–2010

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."

Leo Tolstoy

Literature

literary realism

1828–1910

"Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be."

Miguel de Cervantes

Literature

Mannerism

1547–1616

"A knight errant who turns mad for a reason deserves neither merit nor thanks. The thing is to do it without cause."

🇺🇸Sylvia Plath

Literature

1932–1963

"I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live."

🇺🇸Ursula K. Le Guin

Literature

1929–2018

"The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next."

Charlotte Brontë

Literature

1816–1855

"Better to be without logic than without feeling."

🇬🇧Terry Pratchett

Literature

1948–2015

"Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong."

Joseph Conrad

fiction

modernist literature

1857–1924

"Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end."

🇫🇷Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Literature

1900–1944

"That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man."

John Donne

Military

1572–1631

"What if this present were the world's last night?"

🇳🇬Chigozie Obioma

Literature

b. 1986

"There are some rhetorical moves that I wouldn’t be able to make if I didn’t know these languages. In terms of writing figurative language, I probably pull a lot from Yoruba imagery…"

🇵🇱Henryk Sienkiewicz

flight instructor

Positivism in Poland

1931–2012

"Whoso loves beauty is unable for that very reason to love deformity. One may not believe in our gods, but it is possible to love them..."

🇩🇪Günter Grass

Literature

1927–2015

"2007 Real Audio interview at NYPL with Günter Grass and Norman Mailer by Andrew O'Hagan"

🇬🇧Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Literature

British Romanticism

1797–1851

"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."

🇫🇷André Gide

Literature

1869–1951

"No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond."

🇵🇱Antoni Lange

Literature

Romanticism

1862–1929

"There live Christ and Nero in our hearts."

William Butler Yeats

Literature

Symbolism

1806–1862

"The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His Heart, 1899"

Emily Brontë

Literature

Romanticism

1818–1848

"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

🇵🇱Bolesław Prus

Literature

1847–1912

"Pity is an emotion equally unpleasant to the bestower as to the recipient."

🇺🇸Mark Z. Danielewski

Literature

b. 1966

"Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead."

🇺🇸Sloane Crosley

Literature

b. 1979

"Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there."

🇬🇧Robert Smith Surtees

Literature

1805–1864

"Life would be very pleasant if it were not for its enjoyments."

🇫🇷Jean de La Fontaine

Literature

1621–1695

"They are too green", he said, "and only good for fools."

🇪🇸Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Literature

Mannerism

1547–1616

"Demasiada cordura puede ser la peor de las locuras, ver la vida como es y no como debería de ser.Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be."

🇺🇸J. D. Salinger

fiction

1919–2010

"There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time."

🇬🇧Mary Shelley

Literature

British Romanticism

1797–1884

"My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed — my dearest pleasure when free."

🇺🇸Czesław Miłosz

Literature

1911–2004

"LearningTo believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life."

🇨🇭Max Frisch

Literature

1911–1991

"You merely had an affair with me, to be exact, and therefore no right to prevent me from another affair.'"

🇵🇱Ryszard Kapuściński

Literature

Realism

1932–2007

"Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat."