Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints, “Ros...-Row...-”
for literature, language arts and social studies classrooms and home schoolers.

Christina Rossetti
b. 12-5-1830; London, England
d. 12-29-1894; cancer

Poet Christina Rossetti wrote romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is best known for her long poem “Goblin Market”, her love poem “Remember”, and for the words of what became the popular Christmas carol “In the Bleak Midwinter”. She was the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Christina Rossetti quotes ~
• “Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.”
• “When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me.”
• “Silence is more musical than any song.”
• “Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts: and no one to thank.”
• “For there is no friend like a sister, in calm or stormy weather, to cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.”

• The Complete Poems of Christina Rosetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
b. 5-12-1828; London, England
d. 4-9-1882

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet, illustrator, painter and translator, was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. He was the brother of the poet Christina Rossetti.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti quotes ~
• “Love is the last relay and ultimate outposts of eternity.”
• “A sonnet is a moment's monument, -/ Memorial from the Soul's eternity/ To one dead deathless hour.”
• “I have been here before./ But when or how I cannot tell:/ I know the grass beyond the door,/ The sweet keen smell,/ The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.”
• “The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.”

• The Complete Poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Edmond Rostand
b. 4-1-1869; Marseille, France
d. 12-2-1918; Paris (Spanish Flu)

Eugene Alexis Rostand, poet and dramatist, is best known for his plays Cyrano de Bergerac and Les Romanesques, which was the inspiration for the musical comedy, The Fantasticks.

FYI - Noted biologist Jean Rostand is Edmond's son; his play L'Aiglon was produced by Sarah Bernhardt.

Edmond Rostand quotes ~
• “The dream, alone, is of interest. What is life, without a dream?”
• “And what is a kiss, specifically? A pledge properly sealed, a promise seasoned to taste, a vow stamped with the immediacy of a lip, a rosy circle drawn around the verb "to love." A kiss is a message too intimate for the ear, infinity captured in the bee's brief visit to a flower, secular communication with an aftertaste of heaven, the pulse rising from the heart to utter its name on a lover's lip: 'Forever'.”
• “A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.”
• “My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.”

Philip Roth
b. 3-19-1933; Newark, NJ

Novelist and creative writing teacher Philip Roth, best known for Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint, was awarded the Pulitizer Prize for American Pastoral.

Philip Roth quotes ~
• “Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”
• “When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.”
• “Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.”
• “Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.”
• “I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you -- it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.”
• “Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
b. 6-28-1712; Geneva, Switzerland
d. 7-2-1778; France

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an Enlightenment philosopher, and literary figure whose political philosophy and socialist theory influenced the American and French Revolutions, was also a composer.

The modern subjective autobiographical genre was initiated in Rousseau's Confessions and is reflected in the work of thinkers from Hegel and Freud; his fictional work was among the most popular novels of the eighteenth century and was important to the evolution of Romanticism. Rousseau has been buried in Paris Pantheon since 1794.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes ~
• “The first man who had fenced in a piece of land, said ‘This is mine,’ and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
• “The noblest work in education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason! This beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated.”
• “Tranquility is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in?”
• “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”
• “From whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will always be equally foolish for a man to say to a man or to a people: “I make with you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I shall keep it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.”
• “The very right to vote imposes on me the duty to instruct myself in public affair, however little influence my voice may have in them.”
• “Men, be kind to your fellow-men; this is your first duty, kind to every age and station, kind to all that is not foreign to humanity. What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”
• “The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.”
• “Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.”
• “It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
• “I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.”
• “Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything.”

• The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

J. K. Rowling Photo

J. K. Rowling
b. 7-31-1965; Yate, South Gloucestershire, England

J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, taught English as a second language.

J. K. Rowling quotes ~
• “I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself.”
• “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.”
• “Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.”