Quotes About Legacy

The land was ours before we were the land's.She was our land more than a hundred yearsBefore we were her people.

And were an epitaph to be my storyI'd have a short one ready for my own.I would have written of me on my stone:I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

No memory of having starredAtones for later disregard,Or keeps the end from being hard.Better to go down dignifiedWith boughten friendship by your sideThan none at all. Provide, provide!

I am assured at any rateMan's practically inexterminate.Someday I must go into that.There's always been an AraratWhere someone someone else begatTo start the world all over at.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this "something" cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It's what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn't count it. Nothing counts without it.

Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.

Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come to my grave and truthfully say: 'He who sleeps here never gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind word.

I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won upon the fields of thought; but I do know, that coming from the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this 'bank and shoal of time' a richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and for child .

The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees; all times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name…

Best while you have it use your breath, There is no drinking after death. John Fletcher, The Bloody Brother

It was far from the first time he'd encountered the tendency to believe the dead would have wanted whatever was most convenient to the living.

The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them. Strike

Wolf is the Grand Teacher. Wolf is the sage, who after many winters upon the sacred path and seeking the ways of wisdom, returns to share new knowledge with the tribe. Wolf is both the radical and the traditional in the same breath. When the Wolf walks by you - you will remember.

We tend to go on loving the things the people who loved us loved. They are invested with soul, even if the people are long dead, even if they do not turn out to be who you thought they were.

We want to do something with the time we have, something that will give that time a certain meaning, a certain weight.

Now it's your land. But it's important, at least to me,that you remember that it's not just your land. There is a history. Now you're part of it. Good night. And off they go.

But I told my grandmother, and she listened, and then she said, "Don't ever tell this story to anybody else. If you tell this story to anybody else, something terrible will happen. Something terrible will happen to our family." And then she had a lot to do. (174)

And even as the chariot of time hustles me along, I never forget that Bob Caro is coming up from behind with volume five of LBJ. I hope he makes it. I hope I make it.

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

Along the way [Mozart] got married; fathered seven children (two of whom survived into adulthood); performed as a pianist; violinist; and conductor; maintained a successful teaching studio; wrote thousands of letters; traveled widely; attended the theater religiously; played cards, billiards, and bocce; and rode horseback for exercise. Not bad for someone portrayed as a giggling idiot in the movies.

We cannot possibly overstate the importance of the Christian Church for its role in preserving, defending, and, ultimately, re-civilizing Europe.

Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life's artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.