Quotes about Legacy

All things fade and quickly turn to myth: quickly too utter oblivion drowns them. And I am talking of those who shone with some wonderful brilliance: the rest, once they have breathed their last, are immediately 'beyond sigh, beyond knowledge'. But what in any case is everlasting memory? Utter emptiness.

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just. Then they will not care how devout you have been. But will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods then you will be gone but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of the loves ones.

Did not he, then, who, if he had died at that time, would have died in all his glory, owe all the great and terrible misfortunes into which he subsequently fell to the prolongation of his life at that time?

I worked with Diodotus the Stoic, who made his residence in my house, and after a life of long intimacy died there only a short time ago.

Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants.

When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.

We immortals aren't misers - we don't hoard! Such things are pointless.

The hands reaching in among the leaves and spines were once my mother's. I've passed them on. Decades ahead, you'll study your own temporary hands, and you'll remember. Don't cry, this is what happens.

At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.

I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.

They told us to depend on memory, because nothing written down could be relied on. The Spirit travels from mouth to mouth, not from thing to thing: books could be burnt, paper crumbles away, computers could be destroyed. Only the spirit lives forever, and the Spirit isn't a thing.