Quotes About Legacy

How could people let go of their old things, when each told a part of their story? Old things were a literature, a narrative.

We decided he might like to know about the people and places that belong to him now so he can begin a story all his own.

at his mother's grave and his father's urn.

The language itself, whether you speak it or not, whether you love it or hate it, is like some bewitchment or seduction from the past, drifting across the country down the centuries, subtly affecting the nations sensibilities even when its meaning is forgotten.

There are a lot of things we don't have in life, but time is not one of them. Time is all we have. One lifetime under this name, to produce a body of work that says, "This is how I saw the world." Your work is worthy of whatever time it takes.

Hillary Clinton was her protégée, even when she was the nation's First Lady and then a U.S. senator from New York. Some of the cracks in the glass ceiling were put there by Ann.

true. On more than one occasion I have asked myself: "If I were ninety-five years old, on my deathbed, and looking back over my life, how would I wish I had used this body, this intelligence, and this system of energy? What did I want to do with this lifetime?" These moments make me aware of the importance of using time to consciously accomplish what I feel is valuable, and to experience those things that I am deeply curious about.

Never mind being first. If you want to count for something, be the last of your kind.

Clem Miniver: She was a good cook, as good cooks go. And as good cooks go, she went.

And it will matter little, in after days, Whether this twig, or that, kindled the blaze.

Schubert had been one of the first composers to groan, "Who can do anything after Beethoven?

If our mothers are rolling over every time we do something on their list of things a lady shouldn't do, they've been flopping like flounder since they were buried.

The excellent becomes the permanent.

We all bear traces of the starvation struggle which for so long made up the life of the race.

I had a consuming ambition to possess a miller's thumb. I believe I have never since wanted anything more desperately than I wanted my right thumb to be flattened as my father's had become, during his earlier years of a miller's life.

The people of the stone houses are gone, whirled like chaff over dry fields, scattered by the war dances of dust devils. what remains — sculpted walls, curved shards, small stores of corn — says little. What we know is that they lived like birds. That from their doorways they looked out and out over shimmering trees into the arms of sky, And that one day, light-boned, weightless as any winged flock before a journey, they rose and flew. —Mesa Verde

I realized then that the generations may change but the strength of our nation remains solid.

The upper classes worshipped then, as now, not the Spirit of Spring but their own ancestors.

Throughout the ages, humans have had a need to mark the time and place when and where people make the final stop on their journey from this world to the next.

Memory changed for both Edward and Elisabeth. There were fewer people now to keep it alive.

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

Miss Finch said she meant to listen to new books as well as her old favorites, even the ones that pierced her heart, before she departed this world.

When the body dies, where will they go, those migrant birds and prayer calls, as heat from sheets when taken from a dryer? With voices of the ones I loved, great loves and small loves, train wheels, crickets, clock-ticks, thunder – where will they, when in fragrant, tumbled heat they also leave?

The stories that travel down through the years nurture our descendants long after we're gone. We contribute to this continuity by the acceptance we offer and the time we share. It's our immortality.