Quotes About Legacy

Never have children, only grandchildren.

Of course his dust would be absorbed in other living things and to that degree at least he would exist again, though it was plain enough that the specific combination which was he would never exist again.

The worst thing to happen to Lincoln - aside from the unfortunate incident at Ford's theatre - was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.

Let the dust take me when the adventure's done and I shall make the dust glitter for all eternity with my marvelous fury.

Ronald Reagan is a triumph of the embalmer's art.

Why is it so important to continue after death? We never question the demonstrable fact that before birth we did not exist, so why should we fear becoming once more what we were to begin with?

But then Americans have always lived entirely in the present, and this generation is no different from mine except that now there is more of a past for them to ignore.

Nothing man invents can last forever, including Christ, his most mischievous invention.

I belong to the highest class there is: I'm a third generation celebrity. My grandfather, father, and I have all been on the cover of Time. That's all there is. You can't go any higher in America.

I am alone in my study. I have already put away Julian's papers. The thing is finished. The world Julian wanted to preserve and restore is gone... but I shall not write forever, for who can know the future? Meanwhile, the barbarians are at the gate. Yet when they breach the wall, they will find nothing of value to seize, only empty relics. The spirit of what we were has fled. So be it.

When will my country die for me?

The 20th century is the probably most hideous ugly century of the history of the human race. More people were killed by war in the 20th century than ever in history.

For all the pious sloganeering that accompanied it, the struggle was only incidentally one between Islam and Christianity. Territory was the aim, along with something less tangible but equally compelling: the right to claim the legacy of the Roman Empire…. Had not… Mehmed the Conqueror toppled the Byzantines and seized Constantinople two centuries before? Far from wishing to obliterate the Byzantine past, the Ottomans meant to assume it as their own…

They think my mother's ashes are marijuana.

I wouldn't like to be cremated', she said. 'You'd prefer worms?' 'Yes, I would.

I recognized my work for what it was--as unimportant a drug as cigarettes to get one through the weeks and years. If we are extinguished by death, as I still try to believe, what point is there in leaving some books behind any more than bottles, clothes, or cheap jewellry?

She thought for the first time, with happiness: perhaps I have a life in people's minds when I am not there to be seen or talked to.

In five hundred years' time, to the historian writing the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, this little episode would not exist. There will be plenty of other causes. You and me and poor Jones will not even figure in a footnote. It will be all economics, politics, battles.

I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself. For what? I didn't know, nor how, except by taking a look around at the little I would be leaving.

The dead of an army become automatically heroes like the dead of the Church become Martyrs.

What did the truth matter? All characters once dead, if they continue to exist in memory at all, tend to become fictions.

We didn't want to be reminded of how little we counted, how quickly, simply, and anonymously death came. Even though my reason wanted the state of death, I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself. For what? I didn't know, nor how, except by taking a look around at the little I would be leaving.

One forgets the dead quite quickly; one doesn't wonder about the dead-what is he doing now, who is he with?

As one grows old I think one becomes more attached to family things- to houses and graves.