Born this week
Sunday November 8th, 2026
Robert Louis Stevenson
November 13, 1850 – December 3, 1894
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, ...
Martin Luther
November 10, 1483 – February 18, 1546
Blood alone moves the wheels of history.
Martin Luther, OSA, was a German friar, Catholic priest, professor of theology and seminal figure of the 16th-century movement in ...
Friedrich Schiller
November 10, 1759 – May 9, 1805
The strong man is strongest when alone.
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his ...
George S. Patton
November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945
If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you'll be amazed at the results.
George Smith Patton, Jr. was a United States Army general, best known for his flamboyant character and his command of the Seventh United ...
Muhammad Iqbal
November 9, 1877 – April 21, 1938
But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge.
Sir Muhammad Iqbal, widely known as Allama Iqbal, was a philosopher, poet and politician in British India who is widely regarded as having ...
Hedy Lamarr
November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000
Confidence is something you're born with. I know I had loads of it even at the age of 15.
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian and American actress and inventor. After an early film career in Germany, which culminated in her controversial ...
James Broughton
November 10, 1913 – May 17, 1999
I'm happy to report that my inner child is still ageless.
James Broughton was an American poet and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a precursor to the Beat poets. He ...
Henry Van Dyke
November 10, 1852 – April 10, 1933
Use what talents you possess the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
Henry Jackson van Dyke (November 10, 1852 - April 10, 1933, aged 80) was an American author, educator, and clergyman.
Jawaharlal Nehru
November 14, 1889 – May 27, 1964
The purely agitational attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject.
Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics for much of the 20th century. He emerged as ...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
November 11, 1821 – February 9, 1881
Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and ...
Carl Sagan
November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science ...
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902
I shall not grow conservative with age.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. Her ...
Oliver Goldsmith
November 10, 1730 – April 4, 1774
Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
Oliver Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield, his pastoral ...
Ninon de L'Enclos
November 10, 1620 – October 17, 1705
The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
Anne "Ninon" de l'Enclos also spelled Ninon de Lenclos and Ninon de Lanclos was a French author, courtesan, freethinker, and patron of the ...
Mary Astell
November 12, 1666 – May 11, 1731
Every Body has so good an Opinion of their own Understanding as to think their own way the best.
Mary Astell (12 November 1666 - 11 May 1731) was an English feminist writer and rhetorician. Her advocacy of equal educational ...
Louis D. Brandeis
November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
Louis Dembitz Brandeis was an American lawyer and associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939. He was ...
Norman MacCaig
November 14, 1910 – January 23, 1996
I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.
Norman Alexander MacCaig OBE was a Scottish poet and teacher. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of ...
Marya Mannes
November 14, 1904 – September 13, 1990
In aid, the proper attitude is one omitting gratitude.
Marya Mannes was an American author and critic, known for her caustic but insightful observations of American life. Mannes also wrote under ...
Claude Monet
November 14, 1840 – December 5, 1926
Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.
Oscar-Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's ...
Dorothy Day
November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980
Love casts out fear, but we have to get over the fear in order to get close enough to love them.
Dorothy Day, Obl.O.S.B. was an American journalist, social activist, and devout Catholic convert. She advocated the Catholic economic ...
Margaret Mitchell
November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949
The world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business.
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. One novel by Mitchell was published during her lifetime, the American ...
Antonio Porchia
November 13, 1885 – November 9, 1968
He who does not fill his world with phantoms remains alone.
Antonio Porchia was an Argentinian poet. He was born in Conflenti, Italy, but, after the death of his father in 1900, moved to Argentina. ...
Auguste Rodin
November 12, 1840 – November 17, 1917
I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.
François-Auguste-René Rodin, known as Auguste Rodin, was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of ...
Spiro T. Agnew
November 9, 1918 – September 17, 1996
A tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one, and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government.
Spiro Theodore Agnew was an American politician who served as the 39th Vice President of the United States from 1969 to 1973, serving under ...
Benjamin Banneker
November 9, 1731 – October 9, 1806
Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.
Benjamin Banneker was a free African American scientist, surveyor, almanac author and farmer. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, to a free ...
Ivan Turgenev
November 9, 1818 – September 3, 1883
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection ...
Sarah Fielding
November 8, 1710 – April 9, 1768
The loss of liberty which must attend being a wife was of all things the most horrible to my imagination.
Sarah Fielding was a British author and sister of the novelist Henry Fielding. She was the author of The Governess, or The Little Female ...
Joseph Franklin Rutherford
November 8, 1869 – January 8, 1942
Life everlasting in a state of happiness is the greatest desire of all men.
Joseph Franklin Rutherford, also known as "Judge" Rutherford, was the second president of the incorporated Watch Tower Bible and Tract ...
Richard Cecil
November 8, 1748 – August 15, 1810
The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.
Richard Cecil was a leading Evangelical Anglican clergyman of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Monica Edwards
November 8, 1912 – January 18, 1998
We are in an electronic technology age now and it's about time we put away the old stuff.
Monica Edwards was an English children's writer of the mid-twentieth century best known for her Romney Marsh and Punchbowl Farm series of ...
Martha Gellhorn
November 8, 1908 – February 15, 1998
It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.
Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist, who is considered one of the greatest war correspondents of ...
Imre Lakatos
November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974
Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.
Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its ...
James Schuyler
November 9, 1923 – April 12, 1991
However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.
James Marcus Schuyler was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1980 collection The Morning of the ...
Anne Sexton
November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974
Death's in the good-bye.
Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her ...
Karl Shapiro
November 10, 1913 – May 14, 2000
Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.
Karl Jay Shapiro (November 10, 1913, Baltimore, Maryland—May 14, 2000, New York City) was an American poet. He was appointed the fifth ...
Roland Barthes
November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980
Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse ...
Grace Kelly
November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982
Women's natural role is to be a pillar of the family.
Grace Patricia Kelly was an American film actress who, after marrying Prince Rainier III, became Princess of Monaco. After embarking on an ...
Augustine of Hippo
November 13, 354 CE – August 28, 430 CE
Custom is second nature.
Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine or Saint Austin, was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings ...