Quotes About Legacy

It's your life story if you're a mathematician: every time you discover something neat, you discover that Gauss or Newton knew it in his crib.

We're all stories, in the end.

My family, although they're very large on both my parents' sides, they don't know much about their family tree. Occasionally, they try to dig, but they can't get very far, and it's baffling. In Dublin, it seems that so many public records were wiped out it's proven to be very difficult, so I know very little.

I don't want to go on much longer, really. I think that would suggest a lack of imagination. A certain lack of dignity also.

Ancestor worship must be an appealing idea to those who are about to become ancestors.

a?a cum grânele noi ies din p?mânturile vechi, la fel ?i "toat? aceast? nou? ?tiin??" pe care oamenii o înva?? apare tot din b?trânele hâr?oage. Geoffrey Chaucer,1380, "Parlament al p?s?rilor

In the end, he told himself some days, there is only what is done and what is not done. That is a life, that is what remains behind... It did not matter what sort of men or women they had been in life... his inner self would be lost to time, as he himself would be lost.

Riches should come as the reward for hard work, preferably by one's forebears

Plotina laughed. "I don't intend to. The way I go into this house is the way I hope to be carried out of it.

To write about long-dead people is one thing. To write about one's own lifetime is different. And of course I must take care to avoid writing anything that gives offense to the emperor. Yes, I'm finding it difficult. But never fear, I shall finish it, and Philip will be impressed.

Consider all the mortals that populated the earth before us, generation upon generation, extending back through countless centuries. All are dead, all turned to dust—so many, one wonders how the earth has room to hold them all.

impressed. Commodus was the first emperor to be born heir to the throne—"born in the purple" as it was called in countries that had kings and royal dynasties—and he seemed completely at ease, behaving as if he had been emperor all his life.

They say there's been no woman her equal since Cleopatra," said Philostratus. "Ah, Cleopatra!" said Galen. "Always the standard against whom any strong female is compared." "And not always as a compliment," noted Gaius, "since Cleopatra was the enemy of Rome, and came to a bad end.

When I was a boy, my grandfather taught me the list of kings: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius the Elder, Servius Tullius. Tarquinius the Proud was to be the last, the very last, cast out and replaced forever by something called a republic. A mockery! A mistake! An experiment that failed! Today is the republic's final day. Tomorrow, men will shout in the Forum, 'All hail King Coriolanus!

Amazing, isn't it? In fact if not in name, the Roman Empire is being run by women. Legitimacy runs through the female line—from the emperor's wife to her sister, thence to her daughters, and only then to the young emperor and his cousin. No woman has exercised such power since Cleopatra, and even she pales in comparison. Cleopatra had Egypt, and Asia for a while, but Maesa and her daughters rule every province of the Roman Empire.

Like Cleopatra," observed Philostratus, "they reached such a pinnacle by using their connection to men: Cleopatra through Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, Domna through Severus, Maesa and her daughter through the two young cousins—one or both of them said to be the son of Caracalla. And now those boys rule jointly, since Antoninus adopted him and made him Caesar.

I am hoping that I can be known as a great writer and actor some day, rather than a sex symbol.

The most important seed I can sow in this life is my children, and the love and knowledge that I can bestow upon them and the help I can give them.

I want to be the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction.

You have many years ahead of you to create the dreams that we can't even imagine dreaming. You have done more for the collective unconscious of this planet than you will ever know.

I don't really have a schedule of when I want to show my children my movies.

Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.

Audrey gave more than she ever got. The whole world is going to miss her.

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.