Quotes about Legacy

O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude...

for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.

If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.

He hoped that none of his descendants would get mixed up in politics, which was a trade for butchers and bandits.

That huge old house, which had an entrance on two streets, was one-story tall with a mansard roof, and it harbored a tribe of great-grandparents, maiden aunts, cousins, servants, poor relatives, and guests who became permanent residents; no one tried to throw them out because in Chile "visitors" are protected by the sacred code of hospitality. There was also an occasional ghost of dubious authenticity, always in plentiful supply in my family.

I'm fine here, Lenny. I'm discovering who I am without all my ornaments and accessories. It's quite a slow process, but a very useful one. Everybody ought to do the same at the end of their life. If I had any self-discipline I would beat my grandson to it and write my own memoirs. I have time, freedom, and silence, the three things I never had amidst all the noise of my earlier life. I'm preparing to die.

The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honour or dishonour to the latest generation.

Not once or twice in our rough island story, The path of duty was the way to glory.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of Ewer, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at st have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.

A precedent embalms a principle.