Quotes About Legacy

The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.

old ways of doing things. It is the ability to make ancient truth the living memory of today. Only the elderly have lived through both the good and the bad decisions of the past. It is they, then, who have the wisdom to alert us to alternatives, to evaluate present choices from the perspective of history. The role of

The service that the whole world needs from the elders is not the service of hours spent and time put in and documents finished and machines fixed. There are untold numbers of people who can do all of those things. No, the service of the elders is not a service of labor, it is a service of enlightenment, of wisdom, of discernment of spirits. Only the carriers of generations past can give us those things, because wisdom is what lasts after an experience ends.

Go, now, and tell those who wait for you that I have spoken. Do not lose courage. The Mother will be with you for many years to come. And when the time of violence is over, She will return to the minds of all the people. Because you and all those who bear your name have held Her safely in your hearts, the world of the Goddess, the Mother of all life, will one day be reborn.

one man created the Pont Neuf.

Was it all worth it? The King might have said that without his extravagant spending, the luxurious experiences for which his country is still celebrated would not have come into existence. The businessman might have added that without it, tourism would not be France's number-one industry today.

The only good thing about age is that sooner or later all of the SOBs who dumped you are going to die.

Marvin Gaye Music superstar Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his father. In court the father said, "This is probably the worst thing I've ever done." Probably??????

Well, I am going on 83 now but not about to quit. There are too many things I know about where I want to see what happens. You, my dear, being one of them, and this new century starting. Do what you can to make it good. And remember, as we used to say, that life is like a pudding: it takes both the salt and the sugar to make a really good one.

Oh, Mama," I said. "What if I don't live that long?" My mother didn't hesitate one second. "By hook or by crook, you will. Having children only increases your grip on the world. It's like reading a thriller. You can't put it down because you have to know how the story turns out.

When the memory of one's predecessors is buried, the as­sumption persists that there were none and each generation of women believes itself to be faced with the burden of doing everything for the first time.

As tempting as it is to dismiss American slavery in the pre–Civil War decades as an antiquated holdover doomed to extinction, in the early decades of the nineteenth century it was flourishing.7

They had written it "for those who come after us to study, as an example of what it once cost to be in favor of liberty,

You'll never see a hearse towing a U-Haul.

Death should be a celebration. Like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: ahh!

Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can't be helped; it's part of what makes us who we are.

When I look into my future, what I wish for isn't a job or a title or anything like that. I'm not Mandy, who wants everyone to admire and love her. For me, it would be enough to have one person. Someone who looks into my eyes and really sees me. To have that, that one person and this whole big ocean to explore and take care of, to keep for those who come after me. That would be enough for me.

Lifeis an enormous lottery: the prizes are few, the failures innumerable. Out of the sighs of one generation are kneaded the hopes of the next. That's life.

Lewis said sadly to me, 'When I at last realized that I was not, after all, going to be a great man...' I think he meant 'a great poet.

Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we're only what we've done and what we are going to do. But then I look at the things I've seen and done, and I become a long scrawly line of something important.

No one wants to disappear. Words made things real, and they last so much longer than we do. So, for the record, here are the things I want to be real. And I hope that words are enough to make them that way

No one wants to disappear. Words pin things down and make them real, and they last so much longer than we do.

Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we're only what we've done and what we are going to do. I

History is littered with dead good men.