The greatest treasure | LitBash 30

You may be surrounded by true riches if Vissarion Belinsky is right: "A good library is the greatest treasure." You can amass your own treasure; start with authors who were:

Born this week:

Leon Bloy, France

Max Jacob, France
"When you get to the point where you cheat for the sake of beauty, you're an artist."

Gustav Freytag, Germany

Arijiris Eftaliotis, Greece

Isaak Babel, Russia
"If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy."

Wole Soyinka, Nigeria
"The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny."

Gustavo Sainz, Mexico

Anne Louise Germaine de Stael-Holstein, France
"We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us."

Irving Stone, USA

Iris Murdoch, Ireland
"All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous."

Died this week:

Fritz Reuter, Germany

Boris Polevoy, Russia

Kostas Uranis, Greece

Gabrielle Roy, Canada

Anton Chekhov, Russia
"People who live alone always have something on their minds that they would willingly share."

Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Austria

Konstantin Fedin, Russia

Edmond de Goncourt, France
"A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man."

Rene Arcos, France

Heinrich Boll, Germany
"Artists and women are particularly well suited to be exploited, and each agent is ninety-nine per cent a pimp."

Hector Malot, France