Quotes About Legacy

Since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the more enduring story, rather than the story that is less enduring. —ATTRIBUTED TO COLUMBA OF IONA SIXTH CENTURY A

Story is the primary way we impart what really matters to the next generation.

Storytelling is our task with the next generation, and it starts with loving the story ourselves and telling it as though we believe it—because we believe it.

If we want the next generation to know where they came from and thus who they are, we tell them stories so they won't forget. Then they pass the stories on to the generation after them, and so it goes.

The dusty tombs of long-dead exorcist priests lay in the alcoves below, surmounted by stone effigies, the features eroded by the passing of time and the reverent caresses of their grateful parishioners, a reminder, she knew all too well, of the brevity of life.

He was religious, very religious indeed, this uncle of mine, and after the death of my aunt he became a Carthusian monk. As I write these lines, ill and aged as he is, and bent with pain, I know he is digging his own grave, weak with the weight of the spade, imploring God to take him, and thinking sometimes of me, of his little Bohemian. Ah, the dear, good man, it is to him that I owe all that is best in me.

Legend remains victorious in spite of history.

I wanted to matter. For my life to matter. So many people die and no one knows they ever existed. They're ripples in a stream, disappearing when the wind blows.

We are family. No blood binds us, for we have no blood, but we are bound by time and love. You will carry our love and hope with you to the valley, and it will strengthen you.

None of them were recent, but that was the nature of family stories. They had to be far enough in the past that they took on a mythic quality.

saw clear as day what was going to happen: these white men would erase us. Not just me, but all of us. The noble and the wicked. Wager and Vikers. Lemuel and Caldwell. No history book would show us putting up the telegraph lines and guarding the stagecoaches, tracking Indians and making the West safe. Hell, they might not even show the armies of black cowboys that rode the Texas ranges. Or any of our boys who fought in the Rebellion. Solomon? Would they erase Solomon, too?

I'm not scared of dyin', and I don't really care if it's peace you find in dyin'. Well then let the time be near. And when I die and when I'm gone there'll be one child born and a world to carry on.

Look back at history - those who guided the revolution in the time of its culmination never kept their leading positions long after the turning point.

Since the well-known victory over the hare by the tortoise, the descendants of the tortoise think themselves miracles of speed.

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

Surely in a matter of this kind we should endeavor to do something, that we may say that we have not lived in vain, that we may leave some impress of ourselves on the sands of time.

With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The thing is, they only got there before me. If I'd been born at the same time as John Lennon, I'd have been up there.

No one on his deathbed ever said, "I wish I had spent more time on my business."

Time is the best preserver of righteous men.

I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

I played when I played, and played, I think, against the greatest players in the greatest time in the history of basketball.

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

Everything passes, but nothing entirely goes away.

Once upon a time the English knew who they were.