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;
“You may be the only man in my command who can quote Shakespeare’s sonnets with such a precise memory, or at all, for that matter.”
born January 30, 1950
Philip Lee Williams is an American novelist, poet, and essayist noted for his explorations of the natural world, intense human relationships, and aging. A native of Athens, Georgia, he grew up in the nearby town of Madison. He is the winner of many literary awards including the 2004 Michael Shaara Prize for his novel A Distant Flame (St. Martin’s), an examination of southerners who were against the Confederacy’s position in the American Civil War. He is also a winner of the Townsend Prize for Fiction for his novel The Heart of a Distant Forest, and has been named Georgia Author of the Year four times.
“You’ve got Charm.”
born January 29, 1987
Jessica Ashley better known by her pen name Jessica Burkhart, is an American author. Burkhart works primarily in the tween fiction genre, and is the writer of the Canterwood Crest series of novels.
“If he’s getting married, he’s no longer interesting.”
January 28, 1873 – Aug 3, 1954
Colette French novelist who scandalized and enthralled the public. She is best known for writing Gigi and the Cat , a work that was later adapted into stage and film musical comedies of the same title.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, which includes the poem Jabberwocky, and the poem The Hunting of the Snark, all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy. There are societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.
“I’m not bossy – I just happen to be more capable than most everyone else.”
born January 26, 1974
Shannon Hale is an American author of young adult fantasy and adult fiction, including the Newbery Honor book Princess Academy, the Books of Bayern series, two adult novels, and two graphic novels that she co-wrote with her husband.
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”
25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796
Robert Burns , also known as Rabbie Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire and various other names and epithets, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937
Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider’s view of America’s privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era’s other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.
“I think fiction writers write what they do because no one else has written it and they want to read it.”
January 23, 1940 – July 31, 2015
Alan Stuart Cheuse was an American writer and critic. He graduated from Perth Amboy High School in 1957 and Rutgers University in 1961. After traveling abroad and working for several years at writing and editing jobs, he returned to Rutgers to study for a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, which he was awarded in 1974.
“I think fiction writers write what they do because no one else has written it and they want to read it.”
January 23, 1940 – July 31, 2015
Alan Stuart Cheuse was an American writer and critic. He graduated from Perth Amboy High School in 1957 and Rutgers University in 1961. After traveling abroad and working for several years at writing and editing jobs, he returned to Rutgers to study for a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, which he was awarded in 1974.
“Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.”
22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824
George Gordon Byron, commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron’s best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and the short lyric “She Walks in Beauty”
“This is not an end. It is a beginning. You will need the courage of a lion to face this journey.”
born 21 January 1947
Cherith Baldry is a British writer of children’s fiction and fantasy fiction. Beside publication under her own name she is the author of some works published under each of the house pseudonyms Adam Blade, Jenny Dale, Jack Dillon, and Erin Hunter.
“Mom always taught me not to use the word hate. As if it were profanity.”
born January 20, 1949
Tedd Arnold is a children’s book writer and illustrator. He has written over 50 books, and he has won the “Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor” for his book “Hi! Fly Guy!”..
“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, he was one of the country’s earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career
“Some people care too much. I think it’s called love.”
18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956
Alan Alexander “A. A.” Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, joining the British Army in World War I, and was a captain of the British Home Guard in World War II.
“I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.”
17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849
Anne Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.
“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”
January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004
Susan Sontag American author who wrote On Photography, Against Interpretation, The Way We Live Now, and Illness as Metaphor, among other works. Her numerous literary honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, the MacArthur Fellowship, and the National Book Award.
“Anyone who has no feelings for animals has a dead heart.”
born January 15, 1969
Raegan Butcher is an American poet and singer. He is known for his association with the anarchist collective CrimethInc., who published his first two books of poetry, Stone Hotel and Rusty String Quartet. According to a CrimethInc. biography, Butcher was born in Seattle, Washington and moved to Snohomish, Washington in his youth. In 1991, he published his first written work: a chapbook of poetry titled “End Of The World Graffiti”.
“You can’t negate the ingrained imagination of a whole culture.”
January 14, 1926 – September 4, 1991
Thomas “Tom” Tryon was an American film and television actor, best known for playing the title role in the film The Cardinal (1963) and the Walt Disney television character Texas John Slaughter (1958–1961). He later turned to the writing of prose fiction and screenplays, and wrote several science fiction, horror and mystery novels.
“Things are always happening to me. I’m that sort of bear.”
born 13 January 1926
Thomas Michael Bond, CBE is an English author, most celebrated for his Paddington Bear series of books. Bond was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2015.
“The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.”
January 12, 1949
Haruki Murakami is a contemporary Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country
“forgiveness is not a single act, but a matter of constant practice”
born January 11, 1952
Diana J. Gabaldon is an American author, known for the Outlander series of novels. Her books merge multiple genres, featuring elements of historical fiction, romance, mystery, adventure and science fiction/fantasy.
“The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the heartbreaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.”
January 10, 1887 – January 20, 1962
John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Much of Jeffers’ poetry was written in narrative and epic form, but he is also known for his shorter verse and is considered an icon of the environmental movement. Influential and highly regarded in some circles, despite or because of his philosophy of “inhumanism,” Jeffers believed that transcending conflict required human concerns to be de-emphasized in favor of the boundless whole. This led him to oppose U.S. participation in World War II, a stand that was controversial at the time.
“The best cure for racism is to have somebody shoot at you. Man, it does not matter then what color the arse is that comes to save yours-black or white, you’re ready to give it a big fat kiss.”
born 9 January 1933
Wilbur Addison Smith is a South African novelist specialising in historical fiction about the international involvement in Southern Africa across three centuries, seen from the viewpoints of both black and white families.
“The laws of man are made only to be broken, because they are stupid and unjust.”
8 January 1897 – 10 November 1977
Dennis Yates Wheatley was an English author whose prolific output of thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world’s best-selling writers from the 1930s through the 1960s. His Gregory Sallust series was one of the main inspirations for Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories
“A house is not a home until it has a dog.”
7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995
Gerald “Gerry” Malcolm Durrell, was an English naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author, and television presenter. He founded what is now called the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo (now Durrell Wildlife Park) on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1958, but is perhaps best remembered for writing a number of books based on his life as an animal collector and enthusiast. He was the youngest brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell.
“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.”
January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967
Carl August “Candy” bbc Sandburg was an American poet, writer, and editor who won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as “a major figure in contemporary literature”, especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed “unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life”, and at his death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that “Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.”
“Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you. The future will take care of itself……”
5 January 1893 – 7 March 1952
Paramahansa Yogananda, was an Indian yogi and guru who introduced millions of westerners to the teachings of meditation and Kriya Yoga through his book, Autobiography of a Yogi.
“I’m Death, and I make sure that everyone is equal.”
4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm was a German philologist, jurist, and mythologist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm’s law (linguistics), the co-author with his brother Wilhelm of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm and the editor of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
“Not all those who wander are lost”
3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor who is best known as the author of the classic high-fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”
(approx)January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was prolific and wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification
“Mothers are all slightly insane.”
January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010
Jerome David Salinger Famously reclusive American author of Catcher in the Rye, a controversial novel that paints a compelling picture of teenage disillusionment and alienation. His other literary works include a short story collection entitled Nine Stories and a novella called Hapworth 16, 1924.
