Quotes About Legacy

Tell them I've had a wonderful life.

Either my piece is a work of the highest rank, or it is not a work of the highest rank. In the latter (and more probable) case I myself am in favour of it not being printed. And in the former case it's a matter of indifference whether it's printed twenty or a hundred years sooner or later. After all, who asks whether the Critique of Pure Reason, for example, was written in 17x or y.

The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.

In the sense, that is, that the author who created us alive no longer wished, or was no longer able, materially to put us into a work of art. And this was a real crime, sir; because he who has had the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. He cannot die. The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die. And to live for ever, it does not need to have extraordinary gifts or to be able to work wonders.

Who was Sancho Panza? Who was Don Abbondio? Yet they live eternally because—live germs as they were—they had the fortune to find a fecundating matrix, a fantasy which could raise and nourish them: make them live for ever!

The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die. And to live for ever, it does not need to have extraordinary gifts or to be able to work wonders. Who was Sancho Panza?

Big Angel could not reconcile himself to this dirty deal they had all been dealt. Death. What a ridiculous practical joke. Every old person gets the punch line that the kids are too blind to see. All the striving, lusting, dreaming, suffering, working, hoping, yearning, mourning, suddenly revealed itself to be an accelerating countdown to nightfall. ....This is the prize: to realize, at the end, that every minute was worth fighting for with every ounce of blood and fire.

What everyone fails to notice, when talking to the other humans, to mothers and lovers and strangers in the streeet, is the one obvious point: 'future corpse, future corpse.

Here is the dream of the earth: continuance.

I am armed with a tenacious conviction that somehow the presence of the people who live in a home reside in the atmosphere of the walls forever.

We have seen these bodies, she would think, and even long after we are gone some particle in the universe will hold a memory of the words we once used to describe their beauty.

Destined to die without issue," added Terry, who fancied himself a wordsmith. His real name was Something the Third. As if that wasn't bad enough, "the Third" translated to "Tertius" in Latin. Then "Tertius" shortened to "Terry." So obviously that was what they called him. He kept a private journal in which his feelings were recorded, possibly. The possibility was widely mocked.

This is why parents want grandchildren. Really they want their own children back again, they long to feel that vanished and complete love.

That was what had changed, he thought. To love posterity and the great institutions you had to believe in the wisdom of men. You had to love them as a child might, gazing upward.

Long time lines trail behind every idea, object, person, pet, vehicle, and event.

In the 1880s the focus of the feud had been adultery; in the 1890s the focus shifted to the divided treasure the poet had left behind. Who had the right to possess her? Who had the right to say what she was?

This was a girl who could tell the difference between the page that perishes and the page that endures.

Art is a nation's most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner version which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.

it does not matter if we are forgotten; what matters is the effect we have on those around us and those who come after us. What matters is how our own lives affect the larger, perpetual community of the living.

In sum, it does not matter if we are forgotten; what matters is the effect we have on those around us and those who come after us. What matters is how our own lives affect the larger, perpetual community of the living.

cupboard. The strange little key, which had been his great-grandmother's

That man was Aldus Manutius the Elder (1450-1515) and I will happily admit I hadn't heard of him until about a year ago, but am now absolutely kicking myself that I never volunteered to have his babies.

I have been told that the dying words of one famous 20th-century writer were, "I should have used fewer semicolons" – and although I have spent months fruitlessly trying to track down the chap responsible, I believe it none the less. If it turns out that no one actually did say this on their deathbed, I shall certainly save it up for my own.

Claray had not been made to spend her life on her knees in prayer. The lass had too much passion in her for that. So, he would marry her, reclaim his name, title and home and set to work filling her belly with bairns. The thought made him smile, and imagining all the ways to accomplish the task of filling her belly, all the positions and places he could do so, helped pass the time as they continued their ride through the long day and the evening that followed.