Poet Lawyer

Michel de Montaigne

Philosophy

1533–1592

"He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live."

🇦🇹Franz Kafka

Literature

Realism

1894–1924

"From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you."

🇫🇷Voltaire

Philosophy

Enlightenment

1694–1778

"The king has sent me some of his dirty linen to wash; I will wash yours another time."

🇺🇸Wallace Stevens

Business

1879–1955

"A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman."

🇨🇴Gabriel García Márquez

Literature

magic realism

1927–2014

"But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love."

🇧🇷Paulo Coelho

Science

1947–1985

"All my life I've learned to suffer in silence."

🇨🇭Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

Law

b. 1947

"We don’t want a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots. We don’t want an international order akin to post-democracy or post-law."

🇳🇬Thomas Babington Macaulay

Politics

1826–1878

"We are free, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation."

🇬🇧Wilkie Collins

Literature

1824–1889

"People who read stories are said to have excitable brains."

🇩🇪Joseph Martin Kraus

Music

1756–1792

"The symphony he wrote here in Vienna especially for me will be regarded as a masterpiece for centuries to come; believe me, there are few people who can compose something like that."

🇺🇸Francis Scott Key

Literature

1779–1843

"Francis Scott Keys's biographic sketch at Find A Grave"

🇺🇸Archibald MacLeish

Literature

1892–1982

"Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words."

🇺🇸Stephen L. Carter

Education

b. 1954

"Liberalism, for all its virtues, has begun to develop a sense of entitlement, and needs time to rediscover its soul."

🇫🇷Heinrich Heine

Literature

Romanticism

1860–1931

"If one has no heart, one cannot write for the masses."

🇫🇷Remy de Gourmont

Literature

Symbolism

1858–1915

"Innocence has its instincts, its needs, its physiological dues."

🇩🇪Friedrich von Logau

Literature

1604–1655

"How do you want to make white lilies into red roses? Kiss a white Galatea and she will blushingly laugh."

🇫🇷Charles Perrault

Literature

Classicism

1628–1703

"Fetch me my seven-league boots so I can catch the children."

🇺🇸Harper Lee

Literature

1926–2016

"There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire."

Henry Fielding

Law

1786–1863

"...the excellence of the mental entertainment consists less in the subject than in the author's skill in well dressing it up."

John Mortimer

Literature

1923–2009

"John Mortimer plays in Bristol University Theatre Archive"

🇺🇸Scott Turow

Literature

b. 1949

"Nobody ever gets what they want when it comes to love."

🇺🇸Studs Terkel

Literature

1912–2008

"I'm celebrated for celebrating the uncelebrated."

Petina Gappah

Literature

b. 1971

"Authentic is one of my least favourite words because in such a diverse country, whose authenticity are you talking about?"

🇮🇳Khushwant Singh

Politics

1915–2014

"I've always been indifferent to dressing. Amita Malik got it right when she put me among the worst dressed men in India. But yes, I am a born joker."

🇺🇸Orison Swett Marden

Literature

1848–1924

"We make the world we live in and shape our own environment."

🇲🇽Carlos Fuentes

Literature

1928–2012

"The North American world blinds us with its energy; we cannot see ourselves, we must see you."

🇺🇸Andrew Vachss

Literature

1942–2021

"Everything that's in books comes out of what I've seen, or touched, or felt, or smelt, and if I had one wish it would be that the books were fiction."

🇦🇺Randa Abdel-Fattah

Literature

b. 1979

"Distance in time has made my voice less contrived and subjective. I don’t feel I’m writing some kind of diary . I am far more conscious of my voice and more disciplined in separating myself from my characters…"

🇳🇴Peter Wessel Zapffe

Philosophy

1899–1990

"Let the earth be silent after ye!" by Erik M. Lieungh, University of the Arctic"