"Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions." A.E. Housman (1859), who worked as a clerk in the Patent Office in London for 10 years.

"A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom." Robert Frost (1874), who John F. Kennedy asked to read a poem at his inauguration.

Both men were born on this day, March 26.