Quotes About Legacy

A book is like a large cemetery upon whose tombs one can no longer read the effaced names. On the other hand, sometimes one remembers well the name, without knowing if anything of the being, whose name it was, survives in these pages.

You're as strong as the Pont Neuf. You'll live to bury us all!

There was a time when my ancestors were proud of the title of chamberlain or butler to the King," said the Baron. "There was also a time," replied Morel haughtily, "when my ancestors cut off your ancestors' heads.

No doubt my books too, like my mortal being, would eventually die, one day. But one has to resign oneself to dying. One accepts the thought that in ten years oneself, in a hundred years one's books, will not exist. Eternal duration is no more promised to books than it is to men.

And yet, my dear Charles Swann, whom I used to know when I was still so young and you were nearing your grave, it is because he whom you must have regarded as a young idiot has made you the hero of one of his novels that people are beginning to speak of you again and that your name will perhaps live.

a book is a great cemetery in which, for the most part, the names upon the tombs are effaced.

Long after the poor departed have gone from our hearts, their insignificant dust continues to be mingled, to be used as an alloy, with the events of the past.

They say that Death embellishes its victims and exaggerates their virtues, but in general it is actually life that wronged them. Death, that pious and irreproachable witness, teaches us, in both truth and charity, that in each man there is usually more good than evil.

his mother's blue eyes which he had handed down to her, like some trinket to be kept in the family,

Children do take after their parents, of course. But the rearrangement of the inherited qualities and defects is done so strangely that only one of a pair of qualities which seemed inseparable in a parent may turn up in the child; and it may be blended with a defect of the other parent that had once seemed incompatible with it.

Proust's life changed due to a very large inheritance he received (in today's terms, a principal of about $6 million, with a monthly income of about $15,000).

Je moi-même semblait en fait à avoir devenir la sujet de ma livre: un église, un quatuor, et la amitié entre François I and Charles V.

Many a man lives a burden to the Earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of Eternity. To such my errand is

This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!

Never while anything is left of me shall this... camp be forgotten. It has fairly grown into me, not merely as memory pictures, but as part and parcel of mind and body alike.

It was the afternoon of the day and the afternoon of his life, and his course was now westward down all the mountains into the sunset. [speaking about Ralph Waldo Emerson]

Luther's principles for the internal, and Machiavelli's practice for the external, direction of the State were to be the ideal for many generations.

The wonder of an object is that it is not a thought. A thing is first and foremost itself. An inconsequential pebble picked up on the side of the road has preceded us by anything up to four hundred million years, and its face will be brightened still further by rain that will fall here thousands of years after we have vanished. We might change things in the world, yet the most minimal, seemingly insignificant object outlasts us.

We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us. The gift of the world is our first blessing.

It will take away a man's usefulness in his generation.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." Those

They got the Library of Alexandria. They're not getting mine. Bumper sticker (with quote flanked by silhouettes of pistol and rifle)