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Christopher Marlowe
b. 2-26-1564; Canterbury, England
d. 5-30-1593; Deptford, stabbed at the house of Mrs. Bull
Dramatist, poet and translator, Christopher Marlow is remembered most for his blank verse, overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death. Among his works are the plays Dido, Queen of Carthage, Tamberlaine, and Doctor Faustus, and the poem Hero and Leander.
The tale of Marlowe being stabbed in a drunken brawl has been tempered with speculation that he died because he was a spy or an aetheist.
Marlowe was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.
Christopher Marlowe quotes ~
• “Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove, That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields.” The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
• “I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.” The Jew of Malta, Prologue
• “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” ~ The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus
• “O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.” The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, Scene VIII
• “Our swords shall play the orators for us.” Tamburlaine the Great, Part I, Act I, Scene II
• The Complete Plays,
Christopher Marlow
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
(image from Wikipedia)
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Gabriel Garcia Márquez
b. 3-6-1927; Aracataca, Colombia
Gabriel “Gabo” García Márquez was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts”.
Gabriel Garcia Márquez quotes ~
• “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
• “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”
• “The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.”
• “Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.”
• “No medicine cures what happiness cannot.”
• more Latinos posters
• Love in the Time of Cholera poster
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez at Amazon
• attended Montessori school
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José Julian Martí y Pérez
b. 1-28-1853; Havana, Cuba
d. 5-19-1895; Battle of Dos Rios, Cuba
Although he isn't well known outside of Cuba, the poet José Martí is one of that country's greatest heroes. He sought to change his country's history with his words and actions, and he ended up paying the ultimate price for freedom. There is a monument in Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba, dedicated to him.
José Martí was born in Havana in 1853. Cuba was a Spanish colony, and the young Martí believed his land should be independent. He published a newspaper devoted to Cuban freedom when he ws only 16. His revolutionary views got him in trouble with the authorities. He was sentenced to six years of hard labor, but he was released after seven months and exiled to Spain. There he earned two college degrees and published articles and books about Cuban independence.
Martí then taught in Mexico and Guatemala, served as a diplomat in various South American countries and lived for fourteen years in the U.S., where he was a journalist and commentator. He also wrote two books of poetry Ismaelillo (1882) and Versos Sencillos (1891). (The words to the famous Cuban song “Guantanamara” are based on one of his poems.) But he ached to return to Cuba and work for its freedom.
In 1892, while he was still living in the U.S., Martí founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party and spent the next three years trying to raise an army to fight the Spanish. He finally succeeded, and they landed in Cuba in 1895. He was killed in the battle of Dos Rios on May 19 of that year, but his example and his writings inspired a struggle that continued until Cuba won its independence, seven years and a day after he lost his life. [Poster text based on an out of print poster]
Jose Marti quotes ~
• “Anything that divides men from each other, that separates them, singles them out, or hems them in, is a sin against humanity.” ~ My Race
• more Latino Writers
• Selected Writings
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Harriet Martineau
b. 6-12-1802; Norwich, England
d. 6-27-1876
Writer Harriet Martineau was a philosopher, journalist, abolitionist and feminist. Because of her deafness, and being an “uneducated” woman, the founding of the science of sociology is attributed to Auguste Comte, and Martineau is considered the “first woman sociologist”.
FYI - An invalid much of her life, Martineau may have been the inspiration for the character of Mrs. Jellyby in Charles Dicken's Bleak House; and an early suitor was Erasmus Darwin, brother of Charles Darwin.
Harriet Martineau quotes ~
• “You had better live your best and act your best and think your best today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow.”
• “What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?”
• “The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.”
• “Men who pass most comfortably through this world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.”
• “For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchen... than witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe.”
• Harriet Martineau's Autobiography: Vol I
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John Masefield
b. 6-1-1878; Herefordshire
d. 5-12-1967
Playwright and fiction writer John Masefield was the English Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967. He is remembered as the author of the classic children's novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and many memorable poems, including “The Everlasting Mercy” and “Sea-Fever”.
Masefield was orphaned by age eight and raised by an aunt who saw Masefield's reading and writing habits as something to be squashed. She arranged for him to train for a life at sea - a perfect place to hear sea lore, read, and record his experiences in journals.
John Masefield quotes ~
• “I MUST go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by...” Sea Fever
• “Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult.”
• “Once in a century a man may be ruined or made insufferable by praise. But surely once in a minute something generous dies for want of it.”
• “Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.”
• “Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.”
• “In this life he laughs longest who laughs last.”
• “In the power and splendor of the universe, inspiration waits for the millions to come. Man has only to strive for it. Poems greater than the Iliad, plays greater than Macbeth, stories more engaging than Don Quixote await their seeker and finder.”
• “Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song. / Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.”
• Sea Fever: Selected Poems of John Masefield
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Edgar Lee Masters
b. 8-23-1868; Garnett, KS
d. 3-5-1950; Pennsylvania
Poet, biographer, and dramatist Edgar Lee Masters is best remembered as the author of Spoon River Anthology. The anthology is a collection of short free-form poems that are presented as the epitaphs of 212 citizens of the fictional small town of Spoon River.
You may think, passer-by, that Fate
Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
And wisdom. - Lyman King
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William Somerset Maugham
b. 1-25-1874; Paris, France
d. 12-16-1965
W. Somerset Maugham, a playwright, novelist and short story writer, was reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s. Maugham is best known for Of Human Bondage, a semi-autobiographical novel that deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who was orphaned, and brought up by his pious uncle.
Maugham was forced by his uncle to study medicine - a duty that Maugham eventually found full of creative inspiration - “I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief ...”
W. Somerset Maugham quotes ~
• “We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”
• “It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.”
• “What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.”
• “If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?”
• “Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
• “Writing is the supreme solace.”
• “To write simply is as difficult as to be good.”
• “It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”
• “Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.”
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Guy de Maupassant
b. 8-5-1850; near Dieppe, France
d. 7-6-1893; Paris
French author Guy de Maupassant is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story.
Guy de Maupassant quotes ~
• “Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.”
• “Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.”
• “It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.”
• “A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one.”
• The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant
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Francois Mauriac
b. 10-11-1885; Bordeaux, France
d. 9-1-1970; Paris
Francois Mauriac was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature “for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life”. FYI - Mauriac wrote the foreward to Elie Wiesel's book Night.
Francois Mauriac quotes ~
• “Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed-off wings where he never ventures.”
• “Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.”
• “To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.”
• A Mauriac Reader
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