Quotes About Legacy

was proud of them because he himself had painted them. The order for the seats amounted to $90,000. Who do you suppose got the order—James Adamson or one of his competitors? From the time of this story until Mr. Eastman's death

In the long run, no one but the originator remembers things such as whose idea it was, who spoke first, or who took the first risk. What people remember is magnanimity.

Libraries and museums owe their richest collections to people who cannot bear to think that their names might perish from the memory of the race.

Dust, dust and ashes, fly over my grave, But the Lord shall bear my spirit home.

Was John Brown simply an episode, or was he an eternal truth? And if a truth, how speaks that truth today?

Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

Who cares what the fact was, when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign?

I prefer to live in the South but on my own terms. It takes some doing to insert oneself in such a way as not to succumb to the ghosts of the Old South or the happy hustlers of the new Sunbelt South.

Our ancestors move along with us, in underground rivers and springs too deep for chaos to reach.

It is important for children to learn that they are the sum of those who have come before them.

I covered his thumbprint with my thumb and considered for the first time that Papa might have been more than just old pictures - old, repeated stories.

father's command is a son's law!

Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past—connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially.

If it was true that the meek were going to inherit the earth, then Ma was going to be a Rockefeller.

Your children are not your children,'" he said. "'They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean But I shall be good health to you nonetheless And filter and fibre your blood.

not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, The hundred & fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.

America doesn't know today how proud she ought to be of her Ingersoll .

Shocked? I consider Bob one of the constellations of our time — of our country — America — a bright, magnificent constellation. Besides, all the constellations—not alone of this but of any time—shock the average intelligence for a while. In one respect that helps to prove it a constellation. Think of Voltaire , Paine , Hicks, not to say anything of modern men whom we could mention. {Whitman's thoughts on his close friend, the great Robert Ingersoll }

What stays with you longest and deepest? Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

Have you surpassed the rest? Are you the president? It doesn't matter. They will more than arrive there, every one, and still pass on.

When I Read the Book When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life, Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

Life is the little that is left over from dying.

Say on, sayers! sing on, singers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear.