Quotes About Legacy

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labours of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living.

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die.

The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another's heart.

Pour qui est né après la seconde guerre mondiale, ces événements vieux d'un demi-siècle sont comme des histoires de loups-garous. Cependant le message par lequel s'achève le compte-rendu de ces événements, et qui ne devait être que symbolique, est devenu d'actualité. (postface, 1993)

The beauty of the past belongs to the past.

But it is pleasant to be remembered in England.

Wherever the living are,' whispered my foster mother, 'the dead will be there too.

We're a rather dreary generation on the whole, aren't we? We don't create much beauty of our own, and our one idea seems to be to smash up everybody else's creations.

Perhaps life is like an hour glass, with dear ones the sand that slips from the upper glass--the earth--into the second--eternity.

Above the town, on the hill brow, the stone angel used to stand. I wonder if she stands there yet, in memory of her who relinquished her feeble ghost as I gained my stubborn one, my mother's angel that my father bought in pride to mark her bones and proclaim his dynasty, as he fancied, forever and a day.

Part of Nietzsche's appeal was that it was easy to read a great deal into his work, and people including socialists, vegetarians, feminists, conservatives and, later, the Nazis did. Sadly, Nietzsche was not available to explain himself; he went mad in 1889 and died in 1900, the year of the Paris Exposition.

He told conductors how to conduct and painters how to paint. As Edward said unkindly, he was "the most brilliant failure in history."33

Pulverized by literature,' thought Miss Laburnum. 'The ideal way for a librarian to die.

Our mothers live under our skin.

He (Friedrich Engel de Jánosis) stated clearly that he was the last Engel de Jánosis, when in fact he knew he was not. He left behind his mother, wife, and daughter, all of them Engel de Jánosis. And then there were the Hungarian Engel de Jánosis, his aunts, uncles, cousins still alive in Pécs and in other towns and villages in Hungary. He knew this. They were not dead, not yet anyway, but in his mind, they were. Already, the historian was rewriting history.

It starts with the father. But for me, it started with my mother. My mother and her secrets.

Look at me. You are the first person to ask about him. Do you understand? No one has ever asked about this man, your relative, Richard. No one has called him down. No one ever printed out his name. You are responsible now. You must remember him in order to honor him.

Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.

Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.

I don't think there will be a woman prime minister in my lifetime.

No man is responsible for his father. That was entirely his mother's affair.

My grandmothers were strong. They followed plows and bent to toil. They moved through fields sowing seed. They touched the earth and grain grew. They were full of sturdiness and singing. My grandmothers were strong. My grandmothers were full of memories Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay With veins rolling roughly over quick hands They have many clean words to say. My grandmothers were strong. Why am I not as they?