Quotes about Legacy

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

You can't just check out and think it will all be over. It won't be over for anyone who loves you. You'll only leave them to run after the pieces that scatter in the angry wind. You'll leave them desperately trying to solve the problems you wouldn't . . . all while plugging their own wounds. Even if you're like me, single without children, you could impact generations. Is quick relief worth it?

Well, I always wanted to write from the time I was very little, and my mother encouraged me. She wrote a journal from the time she was 15 up until about the age of 76.

When a child is given to his parents, a crown is made for that child in Heaven, and woe to the parents who raise a child without consciousness of that eternal crown!

In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?

You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.

I thought that I would never reach for it again without remembering the old granny in front of me now, standing almost on tiptoe, squinting as she strained to see the words in the Bible her son held aloft.

Best followed now is this life, by hurrying, like itself, to a close. Few things remain. He was repulsed in efforts after a pension by certain caprices of law. His scars proved his only medals. He dictated a little book, the record of his fortunes. But long ago it faded out of print--himself out of being--his name out of memory. He died the same day that the oldest oak on his native hills was blown down.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters - two beautiful, intelligent black young women - playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

True leaders don't invest in buildings. Jesus never built a building. They invest in people. Why? Because success without a successor is failure. So your legacy should not be in buildings, programs, or projects; your legacy must be in people.

Fathers, yours is an eternal calling from which you are never released.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.