Quotes About Legacy

B. A. Botkin's Lay My Burden Down and the Federal Writers' Project book, The Negro in Virginia.

When I saw the illustration a new idea came to me. Might it not be possible to have Satsuko's face and figure carved on my tombstone in the manner of such a Bodhisattva, to use her as the secret model for a Kannon or Seishi? After all, I have no religious beliefs, any sort of faith will do for me; my only conceivable divinity is Satsuko. Nothing could be better than to lie buried under her image.

To Yukiko, however, drawn as she was to the past, there was something very unsatisfactory about this brother in law, and she was sure that from his grave her father too was reproaching Tatsuo.

Few of her achievements have been recognised, and when they are, the credit is invariably given to the men serving her. This is largely due to a basic handicap: that she was a woman and could only rule in the name of her sons ... In terms of groundbreaking achievements, political sincerity and personal courage, Empress Dowager Cixi set a standard that has barely been matched.

Cixi's tolerance of attacks on her government-and on herself-as well as her willingness to permit a diversity of viewpoints were rematched by any of her predessors or, arguably, her successors.

The two wills made it unmistakeably clear that it was Cixi's dying wish that the Chinese should have their parliament and their vote.

Indeed Empress Dowager Cixi had forseen that her reforms, drastically changing China, could in the end bury her own dynasty.

Empress Dowager Cixi's legacy was manifold and towering.

Few of her achievements have been recognised and, when they are, the credit is invariably given to the men serving her. This is largely due to a basic handicap: that she was a woman and could only rule in the name of her sons-so her precise role has been little known.

The past hundred years have been most unfair to Cixi, who has been deemed either tyrannical and vicious or hopelessly incompetent or both.

But I know, I know my death will not kill me. Rather it is the death of others that will kill me.

It was a house halfway between this and that, between upper-middle-class luxuries and absentminded squalor. My father had been too distracted, while he was alive

If she were still alive, she would be forty-five this year.

Many have died; you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain.

As long as a human being worries about when he will die, and what he has that is his, all of his works are zero. When affection for the I-creature and what it owns is dead, then the work of the Teacher is over.

England was a cold, backward, rebellious little kingdom. It's king: Henry the Eighth, remembered principally for his six wives and the chicken legs clutched in his fat fists.

That is what you're making of the end of your mother's life, child. What will you make of your own?

People like these have done more to relieve human misery than any prophet with a manifesto ever will. They number in the millions, these mortals, but they don't make it into the history books much. They don't do anything sweeping or controversial. They live their lives, contribute their bits of good work, and die quietly in their beds without recognition or reward. Usually.

have we ever heard of any one dynasty ruling endlessly, beyond all bounds of time? Never! Even the illustrious Ishvaku clan, which boasted Lord Rama, died out. The Rettai Mandalathar rose to bring the Chalukya reign to an end. Empires and dynasties do have a habit of rising to tremendous greatness, and crashing to hollow depths; entirely natural, don't you think? There are kingdoms that have ruled for centuries, and disappeared without a trace.

Prince Rajadithan[8]

She who does not make the world better for having lived in it has failed to be all that woman should be.

as the philosopher Walter Benjamin put it: "There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism."24

philosopher Walter Benjamin put it: "There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

To refuse to admit that Muhammad had died was, therefore, to deny his message. But as long as Muslims remained true to the belief that God alone was worthy of worship, Muhammad would live on in their minds.