Baltasar Gracián y Morales

 (January 8th, 1601 - December 6, 1658) A Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer. The son of a doctor, in his childhood Gracián lived with his uncle, who was a priest. He studied at a Jesuit school in 1621 and 1623 and theology in Zaragoza. He was ordained in 1627 and took his final vows in 1635.

Eleanor Hibbert

 (1 September 1906 – 18 January 1993) was an English author who wrote under various pen names. Her best-known pseudonyms were Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, and Philippa Carr; she also wrote under the namesEleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anna Percival, and Ellalice Tate. By the time of her death, she had sold more than 100 million books.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens

 

(November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) (aged 74) Well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called “the Great American Novel”, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Nelson Mandela,

He died December 5, 2013 at age 95, was imprisoned for 27 years for opposing apartheid. He served from 1994 to 1999 as the first Black President of South Africa.

Henry David Thoreau

 (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) (aged 44) An American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state…Source | More

 

Aldous Leonard Huxley

 (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer, humanist, pacifist, and satirist. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays. Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel writing, film stories and scripts…source

Benjamin Franklin

(January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat