Thought of the Day is where you’ll find my little snippets of daily knowledge, historical happenings and newsworthy notes; plus of course the inevitable ‘too good not to add them’ quotes.

I’ve linked them to literary quotes and the books or authors they came from. There’s no rhyme nor reason to them, if it catches my eye then it’s likely to be here, and if you know of an upcoming important happening, or historical even that we should feature on our literary calendar, let us know at;

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“The poetry of the earth is never dead.“

 
         31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821

John Keats  was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in publication for only four years before his death

Complete Poems US
Complete Poems UK

“A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.“

30 October 1751 – 7 July 1816

Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan  was an Irish playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He is known for his plays such as The Rivals, The School for Scandal, The Duenna and A Trip to Scarborough. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford (1780–1806), Westminster (1806–1807) and Ilchester (1807–1812). He was buried at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

The School for Scandal US
The School for Scandal UK

“People are fascinated by the rich: Shakespeare wrote plays about kings, not beggars.”

 
         October 29, 1925 – August 26, 2009

Dominick John Dunne was an American writer and investigative journalist whose subjects frequently hinged on the ways in which high society interacts with the judicial system. He was a movie producer in Hollywood and was also known for his frequent appearances on television

Justice US
Justice UK

“All mankind… being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”

29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704

John Locke FRS  was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and known as the “Father of Classical Liberalism”. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence

Two Treatises of Government US
Two Treatises of Government UK

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 
         27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953

Dylan Marlais Thomas  was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “And death shall have no dominion”, the “Play for Voices”, Under Milk Wood, and stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He became popular in his lifetime and remained so after his premature death in New York City. In his later life he acquired a reputation, which he encouraged, as a “roistering drunken and doomed poet”

Selected Poems US
Selected Poems UK

“In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.”

born October 26, 1945

Pat Conroy  is a New York Times bestselling author who has written several acclaimed novels and memoirs. Two of his novels, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, were made into Oscar-nominated films. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature

The Prince of Tides US
The Prince of Tides UK

“Forbid us something, and that thing we desire.“

 
         c. 1343 – 25 October 1400

Geoffrey Chaucer, known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to be buried in Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.
While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten-year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde, he is best known today for The Canterbury Tales.

Canterbury Tales US
Canterbury Tales UK

“But for us the road unfurls itself, we don’t stop walking, we know there is far to go. ”

24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997

Denise Levertov  was a British-born American poet. When she was five years old she declared she would be a writer. At the age of 12, she sent some of her poems to T. S. Eliot, who replied with a two-page letter of encouragement. In 1940, when she was 17, Levertov published her first poem.

The Collected Poems US
The Collected Poems UK

“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expect to banish paper, but we actually banish thought.”

 
         October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008

John Michael Crichton was an American best-selling author, physician, producer, director and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films. In 1994, Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have worked simultaneously charting at No. 1 in US television (ER), film (Jurassic Park), and book sales (Disclosure)

Disclosure US
Disclosure UK

“I’ve worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done.”

22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013

Doris May Lessing  was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, five novels collectively called Children of Violence, The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos

The Grass is Singing US
The Grass is Singing UK

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.”

 
         21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834

Samuel Taylor Coleridge  was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria.

Biographia Literaria US
Biographia Literaria UK

“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.”

20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891

Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet born in Charleville, Ardennes. He influenced modern literature and arts, inspired various musicians, and prefigured surrealism. He started writing poems at a very young age, while still in primary school, and stopped completely before he turned 21. He was mostly creative in his teens and his “genius, its flowering, explosion and sudden extinction, still astonishes”

Complete Works US
Complete Works UK

“The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style. “

 
         30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745

Jonathan Swift  was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral.

 Gulliver’s Travels US
Gulliver’s Travels UK

“Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks. “

18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941

Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that the processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.

Creative Evolution US
Creative Evolution UK

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. “

 
         October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005

Arthur Asher Miller was a prolific American playwright, essayist, and prominent figure in twentieth-century American theatre. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible  and A View from the Bridge. He also wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on The Misfits.

Collected Plays US
Collected Plays UK

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. “

16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde  was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

The Picture of Dorian Gray US
The Picture of Dorian Gray UK

““My earnest hope is that the entire remainder of my existence will be one round of unruffled monotony.” “

 
         15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction, creating several regular characters who became familiar to the public over the years. They include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls.

Jeeves Box Set US
Jeeves Box Set UK

““I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.” “

14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923

Kathleen Mansfield Murry  was a prominent modernist short story writer who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. At 19, Mansfield left New Zealand and settled in the United Kingdom, where she became a friend of modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. In 1917 she was diagnosed with extrapulmonary tuberculosis, which led to her death at the age of 34.

Collected Stories US
Collected Stories UK

“Life is nothing but an occassional burst of laughter rising above the interminable wail of grief.”

 
         February 8, 1906 – October 13, 1995

Henry Roth  was an American novelist and short story writer. He failed to garner the acclaim some say he deserves, perhaps because after the publication of Call It Sleep he failed to produce another novel for sixty years. Roth attributed his massive writer’s block to personal problems such as depression, and to political conflicts, including his disillusion with Communism. At other times he cited his early break with Judaism and his obsessive sexual preoccupations as probable causes. Roth died in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States in 1995.

Call it Sleep US
Call it Sleep UK

“I think it is the responsibility of a citizen of any country to say what he thinks..”

Harold Pinter, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on this day in 2005.

The Birthday Party US
The Birthday Party UK

“I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears.”

 
         19 December 1915 – 11 October 1963

Édith Piaf   was a French cabaret singer, songwriter and actress who became widely regarded as France’s national diva, as well as being one of France’s greatest international stars

No Regrets US
No Regrets UK

“Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.”

10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008

Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years.

The Birthday Party US
The Birthday Party UK

“How helpless we are, like netted birds, when we are caught by desire!”

 
         October 9, 1915 – October 12, 2010

Belva Plain was a best-selling American author of mainstream fiction. Before breaking into publishing, Belva Plain wrote short stories for magazines while raising her three children. She sold her first story to Cosmopolitan at age 25 and “contributed several dozen to various women’s magazines until she had three children in rapid succession.” Her first novel, Evergreen, was published in 1978. It topped the New York Times bestseller list for 41 weeks and was made into a TV miniseries

Evergreen US
Evergreen UK

“There is no escape – we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986

Frank Patrick Herbert, Jr.  was an American science fiction writer best known for the novel Dune and its five sequels. Though he became famous for science fiction, he was also a newspaper journalist, photographer, short story writer, book reviewer, ecological consultant and lecturer.

Dune US
Dune UK

“Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.”

 
         January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849

Edgar Allan Poe  was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre.

Complete Poetry US
Complete Poetry UK

“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”

6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria’s reign and remains one of the most popular British poets.
The quote comes from the dramatic monologue Locksley Hall, this poem tells the story of a soldier who stays behind to reflect on childhood struggles.

Maud, Locksley Hall and Other Poems US
Maud, Locksley Hall and Other Poems UK

“Shit happens. You need to move on.”

 
         5 October 1937 – 19 September 2015

Jacqueline Jill Collins OBE  was an English romance novelist. She moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s, where she lived, became a U.S. citizen and spent most of her career. She wrote 32 novels, all of which appeared on The New York Times bestsellers list. In total, her books have sold over 500 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages.
Her first novel was The World is Full of Married Men; after publication, romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, called it “nasty, filthy and disgusting” and charged Collins with “creating every pervert in Britain”. It was banned in Australia and South Africa, but the scandal bolstered sales in the United States and the UK.

The World is Full of Married Men US
The World is Full of Married Men UK

“Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed.“

Born 4th October 1941

Anne Rice is an American author of gothic fiction, Christian literature, and erotica. She is perhaps best known for her popular and influential series of novels, The Vampire Chronicles, revolving around the central character of Lestat.

The Vampire Chronicles US
The Vampire Chronicles UK

“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.“

 
         October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938

Thomas Clayton Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. His books, written and published from the 1920s to the 1940s, vividly reflect on American culture and mores of the period, albeit filtered through Wolfe’s sensitive, sophisticated and hyper-analytical perspective. He became very famous during his own lifetime.

Look Homeward Angel US
Look Homeward Angel UK

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever.”

2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948

Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi  was the preeminent leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma (Sanskrit: “high-souled”, “venerable”) applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa, is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for “father”,”papa”) in India.

The Story of my Experiments with Truth US The Story of my Experiments with Truth UK

“Never go crooked. It’s for the love of a man that I’m gonna have to die.” I don’t know when, but I know it can’t be long”.

October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker  and Clyde Chestnut Barrow a.k.a. Clyde Champion Barrow  were American outlaws and robbers from the Dallas area who traveled the central United States with their gang during the Great Depression.

The True Untold Story US
The True Untold Story UK

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