Writing

🇺🇸Henry David Thoreau

Literature

Western philosophy

1817–1862

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.."

Ayn Rand

Philosophy

1905–1982

"When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is."

George Eliot

Journalism

Realism

1819–1880

"So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore."

🇺🇸Ellen Kushner

Literature

b. 1955

"He felt the almost sexual thrill of being the one in the room with all the power."

🇬🇧Mary Astell

Philosophy

1666–1731

"Some reflections upon marriage: with additions"

🇺🇸Amanda Gorman

Social Activism

Feminism

b. 1998

"Kelly Tears Up During Poetry Reading From Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman"

🇮🇷Abbas Kiarostami

Entertainment

1940–2016

"I feel like a tree. A tree doesn't feel a duty to start doing something about the earth from which it comes. A tree just has to bear fruit, and leaves and blossoms. It doesn't feel grateful to the earth."

🇬🇧Penelope Fitzgerald

Literature

1916–2000

"There are dilettantes in human relationships just as there are, let's say, in politics."

🇩🇪Sydney Smith

Philosophy

1927–2011

"He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again."