George Bernard Shaw was born on 26 July 1856:
1909: George Bernard Shaw looking dapper in a fab suit!
“My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.”-George Bernard Shaw, John Bull’s Other Island
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was born on 24 July 1900. Her dreams ran bigger than her husband’s words, deeper than his fame. She was way more than a muse, a wife, a mother: she was a writer, and a damn fine one.*
*Zelda also danced and painted.
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”-Ernest Hemingway
“Eulogy is nice but one does not learn anything from it.”-Ellen Terry
“Let them cant about decorum, who have characters to lose!”-Robert Burns
1869: Ironing Woman by Edgar Degas (born on 7/19/1834)
“I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.”-Margaret Fuller (died on 7/19/1850)
1877: Dancers Practicing at the Bar by Edgar Degas
“Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.”-Willa Cather
Willa Cather My Antonia Library Card Catalog Pendant by Parker’s Porch. $27.00
“Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.”-Anton Chekhov
Playwright and short story genius Anton Chekhov and actress Olga Knipper had a short, independent, mostly long-distance marriage. It began with a low-key, very private wedding in May 1901, and ended with Chekhov’s tragic death three years later. Neither career was sacrificed to the traditional dictates of matrimony.
“Give me a wife who, like the moon, won’t appear in my sky every day.”-Anton Chekhov
“And what does it mean–dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.”-Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
“In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.”-Anton Chekhov, The Seagull
Anton Chekhov died on 15 July 1904, with his wife by his side. Olga Knipper outlived her husband by nearly fifty-five years.
This print, like all of Amanda Atkins’ work, is fantastic:
Flannery O’Connor 8×10 Print by Amanda Atkins. $18.00
Heinrich Heine by Gottlieb Gassen, 1828
Heinrich Heine by Gottlieb Gassen, 1828
My husband’s favourite author, Robert A. Heinlein, was born on 7 July 1907.
1929 Naval Academy Yearbook Photo of Robert A. Heinlein
“A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws.”-Robert A. Heinlein
Portrait of Jean Cocteau by Amedeo Modigliani, 1916
“Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.”-Jean Cocteau
Happy 125th birthday!
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