Quotes About Legacy

On the green they watched their sons Playing till too dark to see, As their fathers watched them once, As my father once watched me

"They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance."

Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

The wisdom of our ancestors.

He was not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

He had recognized, with reluctance, that holiness was not hereditary, but he continued to hope that it might be compulsive.

We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.

For deeds do die, however nobly done,And thoughts of men do as themselves decay,But wise words taught in numbers for to run,Recorded by the Muses, live for ay.

Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled,On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be filed.

Poets that lasting marble seekMust carve in Latin or in Greek.

I like to read great books not because I'm hoping to imitate them but because I want to remind myself how good you have to be to be any good at all. We won't be read in the light of other writers in our zip code or decade but as we compare to Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov. History has set the bar very high, and one must jump over it, not do the limbo under it.

The cruellest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth has been to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.

Books should be cherished, like children, books are for the next generation, like children, like history.

What can death do to you at ninety that life hasn't done to you already!

That's it! We belong to the nineteen hundreds, Vaughan, and Dike and Lina and even Madam, old as she is. But Mike and Reggie and kids like that, why, they're demi-siècle, they're half century, they belong to the two thousands. It scares you, it sounds so far away—but not to them. They'll have the job of fixing up all our mistakes, the demi-siècle boys and girls will. We're tail end of an era.

Reata," he said two decades later

We all leave one another. We die, we change - it's mostly change - we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it's inescapable...

Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I'll make you little jackets; I'll make you little trousers From his old pants. There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank; Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with. Life must go on, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

This book, when I am dead, will be A little faint perfume of me. People who knew me well will say, She really used to think that way.

Acabo de entender que el fútbol no es ni más ni menos que eso. Eso que me dio mi viejo, y que yo le paso a mi hijo. Ese amor gratuito, esa esperanza desbocada. Ese dolor, esa rabia, esa fe rotunda en que, alguna vez, habrá revancha