Quotes About Legacy

I am a financier in a city ruled by financiers. My father was a financier in a city ruled by industrialists.

Historia (Inquiry); so that the actions of of people will not fade with time.

Happiness is not fame or riches or heroic virtues, but a state that will inspire posterity to think in reflecting upon our life, that it was the life they would wish to live.

When the rich give a party and the meal is finished, a man carries round amongst the guests a wooden image of a corpse in a coffin, carved and painted to look as much like the real thing as possible, and anything from 18 inches to 3 foot long; he shows it to each guest in turn, and says: "Look upon this body as you drink and enjoy yourself; for you will be just like it when you are dead." [Herodotus 'Histories', II 82]

He left not knowing where he was going, he got there not knowing where he was, and he came back not knowing where he had been. But history books will point out Columbus as the person who made the Americas available for exploitation. I guess I can make the same kind of ridiculous claim.

Little treasures have a sign that says, Here I am. Bigger treasures have a sign that says, Do you remember. But the most precious treasures of all will have a sign saying, I was there.

Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else.

He who dies a thousand deaths meets the final hour with the calmness of one who approaches a well remembered door.

That's why you must go. Why you must study many things. So you can tell them, tell the people who have forgotten everything, that for better or worse, humankind has created all of these things.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said:"His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: "His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

The Church is a perpetually defeated thing that always outlives her conquerers.

He knows different now. It's the living that chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives. Thomas More had spread the rumor that Little Bilney, chained to the stake, had recanted as the fire was set. It wasn't enough for him to take Bilney's life away; he had to take his death too.

I shall be as tender to you as my father was not to me. For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on who went before?

It's the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives.

Now, sensing that he has less than a week to live, he must pick up his images from where he has left them, walking his own inner terrain. . . He must traverse his whole life, waking and sleeping: you cannot leave your memories alone in this world, for other men to own.

The English will never be forgiven for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they get off their own island.

The world moves on so fast, and we lose all chance of being the women our mothers were; we lose all understanding of what shaped them.

No son wishes to see his son less powerful than himself.

It is not written that great men shall be happy men.

Inside his copy of The Social Contract he keeps a letter from a young Picard, an enthusiast called Antoine Saint-Just: "I know you, Robespierre, as I know God, by your works." When he suffers, as he does increasingly, from a distressing tightness of the chest and shortness of breath, and when his eyes seem too tired to focus on the printed page, the thought of the letter urges the weak flesh to more Works.

It's not easy to speak of nonexistence, even if you've already commissioned your tomb.

Men, it is supposed want to pass their wisdom to their sons; he would give a great deal to protect his own son from a quartr of what he knows.

Interesting how our vocabulary responds, providing us with words we have never needed before, words stacked away for us, neatly folded into our brain and there for our use: like a bride's lifetime supply of linen, or a ducal trove of monogrammed china. Death will overtake us before a fraction of those words are used.