Authors Posters & Prints, “Hea...-Hem...-”
for the literature, language arts and social studies classrooms, home schoolers, and scholars.

Seamus Heaney
b. 3-13-1939; Bellaghy, Northern Ireland
d. 8-30-2013; Dublin

Poet Seamus Heaney, whose work often deals with the local surroundings in Ireland, was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.” He is considered by many to be the most important Irish poet since Yeats.

Seamus Heaney quotes ~
• “Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.”
• “Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit.”
• “Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses.”

Heinrich Heine
b. 12-13-1797; Dusseldorf, Germany
d. 2-17-1856; Paris (chronic lead poisoning)

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, one of the most important German romantic poets, is best remembered for his lyric poetry that was set to music by composers like Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, the Mendelssohns, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, and Carl Orff.

Heine's 1835 poem, De l'Allemagne, was also the inspiration for the ballet Giselle, first staged in 1841.

Nietzsche said “The highest conception of the lyric poet was given to me by Heinrich Heine. I seek in vain in all the realms of millenia for an equally sweet and passionate music. He possessed that divine malice without which I cannot imagine perfection... And how he employs German! It will one day be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of the German language.” - Ecce Homo

Heinrich Heine quotes ~
• “Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.” Almansor, 1821
• “Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.” ~ History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Vol. III (1834)
• “Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea.” ~ History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Vol. I (1834)

• Poetry & Prose, Heinrich Heine

Robert Heinlein
b. 7-7-1907; Butler, Missouri (raised in Kansas City)
d. 5-8-1988; Carmel, CA

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein won “Hugo” and “Retro Hugos” for his novels and the first Grand Master Award for his lifetime achievement.

Heinlein is credited with popularizing TANSTAAFL as a acronym for “There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”. [see Barry Commoner]

Robert Heinlein quotes ~
• “I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
• “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
• “A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.”
• “One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.”
• “The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.”
• “Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
• “Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.”
• “The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.”
• “You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”
• “Butterflies are self propelled flowers.”
• “Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
• “Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often confuses one for the other, or assumes the greater the love, the greater the jealousy. In fact they are almost incompatible; both at once produce unbearable turmoil.”
• “There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk ‘his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor’ on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else.”
• “Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”

• Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader's Companion

Joseph Heller
b. 5-1-1923; Brooklyn, NY
d. 12-12-1999; Long Island

Satirical novelist, short story writer and playwright Joseph Heller is best remembered for his novel Catch-22. The title has become the catch-phrase for situations that are absurd with no possibility of a positive outcome.

FYI - Heller flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier in World War II.

Joseph Heller quotes ~
• “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.”
• “Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war - for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more.”
• “Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.”
• “Rise above principal and do what's right.”
• “When I grow up I want to be a little boy.”
• “He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.”

• more Literature Drama posters

Lillian Hellman
b. 6-20-1905; New Orleans, LA
d. 6-30-1984; Martha's Vineyard

Playwright and author Lillian Hellman's best known works include The Children's Hour (1934), The Little Foxes (1939), and Toys in the Attic (1960). Hellman and detective novelist Dashiell Hammett had a thirty-year affair which was dramatized in the 1977 movie Julia.

Lillian Hellman quotes ~
• “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.” Letter to the US House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1952
• “Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?”
• “If I had to give young writers advice, I'd say don't listen to writers talk about writing.”
• “If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.”

• Six Plays by Lillian Hellman

Felicia Hemans
née Browne
b. 9-25-1793; Liverpool, England
d. 5-16-1835; Dublin, Ireland (dropsy/edema)

Poet Felicia Hemans was the most popular and important female poet of the Romantic era. After her death her poetry came to be seen as meant for children with the 1826 poem Casabianca being included in McGuffey's New Fourth Eclectic Reader (1866). The poem's opening lines -

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.

have been parodied many times -

The boy stood on the burning duck
A stupid thing to do
Because the duck was roasting
On the barbecue

• Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Letters, Reception Materials