'I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.'

'The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.'

- Poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

'Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.'

- Harper Lee from "To Kill a Mockingbird"

'Fear of life closes off more opportunities for us than fear of death ever does.'

- Actress Agnes Moorehead (1900–1974)

'When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.'

- Author Jacqueline Susann (1918-1974)

'Do one thing every day that scares you.'

-Mary Schmich (1953-present), a columnist for the Chicago Tribune

A quote by Florence Nightingale

"Poetry and imagination begin life."

'Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.'

- Legendary author Jane Austen (1775 -1817)

'There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.'

- Writer Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

'Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.'

- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) in "Elenora"

'Adversity, if you allow it to, will fortify you and make you the best you can be.'

-American beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh Jennings (1978-present)

'It might be that some day I shall be drowned by the sea, or die of pneumonia from sleeping out at night, or be robbed and strangled by strangers. These things happen. Even so, I shall be ahead because of trusting the beach, the night and strangers.'

-Janet Reno, the US' first female attorney general (1938-2016)

'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.'

- Author Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'

- Playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

'Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.'

- Author Philip Roth (1933-2018)

'If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.'

- Marine biologist and author Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

'Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.'

- Maya Angelou

'And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.'

-Ralph Ellison, from "Invisible Man" (1913-1994)

'A word after a word after a word is power.'

- Author Margaret Atwood (1939-present)

A quote by Herman Melville

"Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence."

Diving into the life of Henry David Thoreau

Before he went to live in the woods by Walden Pond, Thoreau (who originally went by David Henry) lived a fascinating life, opening a school with his brother, working for his father's pencil-making business, and becoming close to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who'd become a mentor figure for the aspiring writer. This deep profile explores all that and more.

Read George Orwell's essay 'Why I Write'

Written in 1946—after the publication of "Animal Farm" but before "1984"—the essay is part memoir of how Orwell came to see himself as a writer and part analysis of what drives his best work. Commenting on a book he planned to start—likely "1984"—he remarks, "It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write."

A beginner's guide to Toni Morrison

The legendary American writer died in 2019, but her fiction is still as relevant as ever. This primer walks aspiring Morrison fans through her body of work, outlining the ideal starting point for several different kinds of readers. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Simone de Beauvoir was a serious hiker

The existentialist icon began hiking as a young school teacher in Marseilles. Eventually, she would plan out long trips that covered up to 18 miles and took her around 12 hours to complete. She would later write that the hikes saved her “from boredom, regret, and several sorts of depression.”

Scholars trace existential anxiety back to early Hebrew scriptures

Paul Megna, a scholar of literature and philosophy, notes that the existentialist ideas of Kierkegaard (and, to a lesser extent, Sarte and Camus) had their roots in much earlier texts, which posited that "fear of the Lord" was "the beginning of wisdom."

O’Connor’s stories feature Southern outcasts thrust into bizarre situations

The Deep South is presented as a shadowy place, filled with scheming figures posing as upstanding citizens, like the conniving door-to-door Bible salesman of “Good Country People,” and smug intellectuals receiving their comeuppances, like the condescending college graduate of “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

Explore what it's like inside a patient isolation unit, used in situations such as treating a patient or suspected patient with Ebola.