Quotes About Legacy

When one thinks what one leaves in the world when one dies, Only silence is strong, - all the rest is but lies.

Our most important and powerful assignments are in the family. They are important because the family has the opportunity at the start of a child's life to put feet firmly on the path home. Parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles are made more powerful guides and rescuers by the bonds of love that are the very nature of a family.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once done well is done forever.

When it is time to die, let us not discover that we never lived.

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have.

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave.

Some travellers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame

One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

It seems as if no man had ever died in America before, for in order to die you must first have lived. These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times

Old trees are our parents, and our parents' parents, perchance. If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others.

Consider what stuff history is made of, — that for the most part it is merely a story agreed on by posterity.

Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East — to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them — who were above such trifling.

Perhaps this was the first instance of that quiet way of speaking for a place not yet occupied, or at least not improved as much as it may be, which their descendants have practised, and are still practising so extensively. Not Any seems to have been the sole proprietor of all America before the Yankees [...] At any rate, I know that if you hold a thing unjustly, there will surely be the devil to pay at last.

Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether it is interesting or not.

At present our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who, from his peculiar energy, was called "Buster" by his playmates, and this rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.

Some travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit.