• Rex Stout was born on 12/1/1886. “There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.” (Nero Wolfe series)
• James Baldwin died on 12/1/1987. “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” (Go Tell it on the Mountain; Giovanni’s Room)
• Robertson Davies died on 12/2/1995. “Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.” (The Deptford Trilogy)
• Joseph Conrad was born on 12/3/1857. “You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.” (Heart of Darkness; Lord Jim)
• Robert Louis Stevenson died on 12/3/1894. “I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.” (Treasure Island; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Kidnapped; The Master of Ballantrae)
• John Gay died on 12/4/1732. “On the choice of friends, Our good or evil name depends.” (The Beggar’s Opera; Three Hours After Marriage)
• Thomas Carlyle was born on 12/4/1795. “No pressure, no diamonds.” (Sartor Resartus; The French Revolution: A History)
• Samuel Butler was born on 12/4/1835. “It is tact that is golden, not silence.” (Erewhon; The Way of All Flesh)
• Rainer Maria Rilke was born on 12/4/1875. “Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.” (Sonnets to Orpheus; Letters to a Young Poet)
• Christina Rossetti was born on 12/5/1830. “Silence is more musical than any song.” (Goblin Market; In the Bleak Midwinter)
• Alexandre Dumas Pere died on 12/5/1870. “One’s work may be finished some day, but one’s education never.” (The Count of Monte Cristo; The Three Musketeers)
• Anthony Trollope died on 12/6/1882. “I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.” (Chronicles of Barsetshire)
• Sir Osbert Sitwell was born on 12/6/1892. “It is music to my ears. I have always said that if I were a rich man, I would employ a professional praiser.” (Triple Fugue; Before the Bombardment; Left Hand, Right Hand)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

[All images are in the Public Domain and are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]