Quotes About Legacy

You said that I, who see more than you, am insane. I, who pushed the world so much further than you, am insane. I have dared more than you, I have pressed my unique seal so much deeper in the earth, where it will last longer than your dust...you owe me awe.

How do you behave when you know the conventional honors are dross? When you have come to believe with Marcus Aurelius that the opinion of future generations will be worth no more than the opinion of the current one? Is it possible to behave well then? Desirable to behave well then?

Crawford saw that in this place Starling was heir to the granny women, to the wise women, the herb healers, the stalwart country women who have always done the needful, who keep the watch and, when the watch is over, wash and dress the country dead.

He was casting a big Rapala with three treble hooks which his grandfather had given him. He was fishing too fast, casting again and again, retrieving too fast, until he was red-faced and his tee-shirt stuck to him.

You said that I, who see more than you, am insane. I, who pushed the world so much further than you, am insane. I have dared more than you, I have pressed my unique seal so much deeper in the earth, where it will last longer than your dust. Your life to mine is a slug track on stone. A thin silver mucus track in and out of the letters on my monument.

Multiply your age times your realized pretax annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Divide by ten. This, less any inherited wealth, is what your net worth should be. For

Victor wants his children to have a better life. He encourages them to spend many years in college. Victor wants his children to become physicians, lawyers, accountants, executives, and so on. But in so encouraging them, Victor essentially discourages his children from becoming entrepreneurs.

The Rings give them educations. Such gifts are intended to enhance their grandchildren's discipline, ambition, and independence.

Their children will have it better. They will not have to take significant risks. They will become physicians, attorneys, and accountants. Their capital is their intellect.

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not an article for mere consumption, but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

The dead should not rule the living.

The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

as we advance in life these things fall off one by one , and I suspect we are left with only Homer and Virgil , perhaps with only Homer alone.

The earth belongs always to the living generations.

All are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.

There is a ripeness of time for death, regarding others as well as ourselves, when it is reasonable we should drop off, and make room for another growth. When we have lived our generation out, we should not wish to encroach on another.

I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living.

We seem not to perceive that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another.

The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder, it pains me to an unspeakable degree.