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Legacy Quotes
"A letter always seemed to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend."
48
"Every day you leave a legacy behind, so make it a good one by doing something of significance."
46
"The richest person in the cemetery is the one who left behind the most happy memories."
42
"But there could be no doubt that greatness was seated within; greatness was passing, hidden, down Bond Street, removed only by a hand's-breadth from ordinary people who might now, for the first and last time, be within speaking distance of the majesty of England, of the enduring symbol of the state which will be known to curious antiquaries, sifting the ruins of time, when London is a grass-grown path and all those hurrying along the pavement this Wednesday morning are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth."
35
"The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil."
30
"O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence; liveIn pulses stirred to generosity,In deeds of daring rectitude..."
30
"Preserve the spirit of a 'lost' age, when time moved slower."
29
"I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children."
29
"Hopefully, we can build a rivalry and we'll be able to do this a lot. Make a legacy, then retire champions."
28
"Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you."
27
"Mine first --mine last-- mine even in the grave!"
27
"Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives."
27
"The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing."
27
"You may or may not make a million dollars in life, a song may not be sung in praise of you, monuments may not be erected in your name but promise me this: to live life fully, to give wholeheartedly, to do your best with what you have, to impact souls, to use your gifts and talents to serve humanity, to live, love and leave a legacy in your own way."
26
"In another 2,400 years, even Socrates, the most well-known genius of the century, might be forgotten. The future will erase everything--there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible."
26
"The child you hold in your arms is your gift to a future that you will not see. Therefore, we must turn a blind eye to ourselves and selflessly pour the best of ourselves into our children while rigorously sifting out the worst of ourselves. And once we are utterly spent by such daring gestures, we will shockingly discover the resulting emptiness as astonishingly filled."
25
"The richest person in the cemetery is the one who left the most happy memories."
24
"If you would be remembered, write a book worth the reading or live a life worth the writing about."
24
"The dream thatwe are our fathers. I walked to the Brod,41without knowing why, and looked intomy reflection in the water. I couldn't lookaway. What was the image that pulled mein after it? What was it that I loved? Andthen I recognized it. So simple. In thewater I saw my father's face, and that facesaw the face of its father, and so on, and soon, reflecting backward to the beginningof time, to the face of God, in whoseimage we were created. We burned withlove for ourselves, all of us, starters ofthe fire we suffered-our love was the afflictionfor which only our love was thecure . . ."
23
"You will get your father's wealth one day but not his legacy."
23
"All playwrights should be dead for three hundred years."
22
"What will remain is neither you nor me but what we shared among each others."
22
"When it's all over and the dust from our Ancestors bodies and our own settle from the four winds only then will we see that we were here!"
22
"Frankly, our ancestors don't seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars, the broken planet. Clearly, they didn't care about what would happen to the people who came after them."
22
"Dresden's not gone, I said. I touched a hand lightly to my brow. "He's here. I touched Will's bare chest, on the left side. "Here. Without him, without what he's done over the years, you and I would never have been able to pull this off."No, he agreed. "Probably not. Definitely not."There are a lot of people he's taught. Trained. Defended. And he's been an example. No single one of us can ever be what he was. But together, maybe we can."
22
"We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children."
21
"Sumone Yiden Smiff was a businessman of note. Was, past tense. Through years of sweat and swearing and amazingly smart (or lucky) deals he'd built up a mining empire that spanned the sum of known space. At 74 years, he had reached the apex of a career stretching half a century. His companies mined precious commodities like Impervium, Obstinatium and Bitanium. He wasn't really famous, or ostentatious. In fact he only ever made the cover of Fortune One Billion once, twenty-five years ago. He'd never married, had lots of children " light-years apart, apparently."
21
"Invest your life into what you were born to do. Make every minute of your life count. Redeem every minute of your life and convert it into greatness."
20
"Our exertions generally find no enduring physical correlatives. We are diluted in gigantic intangible collective projects, which leave us wondering what we did last year and, more profoundly, where we have gone and quite what we have amounted to....How different everything is for the craftsman who ... can step back at the end of a day or lifetime and point to an object--whether a square of canvas, a chair or a clay jug--and see it as a stable repository of his skills and an accurate record of his years, and hence feel collected together in one place, rather than strung out across projects which long ago evaporated into nothing one could hold or see."
20
"Eternity is the mentality for immortality. Make your mark, leave a positive legacy!"
20
"Life is what you make it and legacy is what you leave it. Stop trying to be perfect, stop waiting for perfection to find you, and start making your environment a product of you instead of the other way around."
20
"Pass on bravery and wisdom to the future generations, not some ragged traditions and baseless cowardice."
20
"The work of each individual contributes to a totality, and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives, past and present - and to come - forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time... An individual life is one thread in the tapestry, and what is one thread compared to the whole?"
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