One of the most famous writers of the early 20th century, Virginia Woolf is known for her fluid and experimental style across forms, from novels and essays to biographies and letters. Woolf also championed feminism and pacifism at a time when neither was popular. Though she won few accolades during her lifetime, her groundbreaking work has cemented her legacy as a literary and social pioneer. Her words here remind us that we can make more of an impact than we realize by simply being ourselves, without pretense or expectation.

A leading transcendentalist, early naturalist, and lifelong abolitionist, Henry David Thoreau started keeping a personal journal when he was 20 at the suggestion of another quintessentially American writer-philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Two years later, having made a habit of journaling, Thoreau jotted down this note. What inspired him to record the thought, we cannot know, but in retrospect the line might be read as a window into his life’s work. A core tenet of transcendentalism is a conviction in the inherent goodness of people and nature. Likewise, a central premise of civil disobedience in the interest of equal rights is that all people are created equal. Thoreau’s writing on the latter subject would go on to influence many other great thinker-activists working toward equality, from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King, Jr.