Posterity Quotes - Page 7

• It cannot be said that the Constitution formed 'the people of the United States,' for all time, into a corporation. It does not speak of 'the people' as a corporation, but as individuals. A corporation does not describe itself as 'we,' nor as 'people,' nor as 'ourselves.' Nor does a corporation, in legal language, have any 'posterity.'

  Lysander Spooner

  People, United States, Doe

  Lysander Spooner (1972). “Let's Abolish Government”, Ayer Company Pub

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• But say That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, Bereaving sense, but endless misery From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me, and without me, and so last To perpetuity; ay me, that fear Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head; both Death and I Am found eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in me all Paradise Lost Posterity stands cursed: fair patrimony That I must leave ye, sons; O were I able To waste it all myself, and leave ye none!

  John Milton

  Son, Paradise, Able

  John Milton (2009). “The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton”, p.576, Modern Library

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• Titles do not count with posterity.

  Thomas Paine

  Titles

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• The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.
  [Lat., Majorum gloria posteris lumen est, neque bona neque mala in occulto patitur.]

  Sallust

  Light, Quality, Bad Qualities

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• I'm interested in designing for posterity.

  Alexander McQueen

  Design

  "The Real McQueen" by Susannah Frankel, www.harpersbazaar.com. April 1, 2007.

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• I don't suppose there's really any critic except posterity.

  Hortense Calisher

  Critics

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• the desire to enforce our own moral and spiritual criteria upon posterity is quite as strong as the desire to enforce them upon contemporaries.

  Suzanne La Follette

  Spiritual, Strong, Arrogance

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• If any man whatsoever hath carried on the design of deposing the King and disinheriting his posterity; or if any man hath yet such a design he should be the greatest traitor and rebel in the world; but, since the Providence of God hath cast this upon us, I cannot but submit to Providence.

  Oliver Cromwell

  Kings, Men, Design

  Oliver Cromwell (1970). “The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell: 1599-1649”

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• Talents, to strike the eye of posterity, should be concentrated. Rays, powerless while they are scattered, burn in a point.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Eye, Rays, Talent

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.46

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• I have thought about posterity all my life. There isn't as much adventure and creative unfolding as there is in planting a garden and watching it grow. It's like watching the film grow, because you don't know what the seed of an idea is going to actually result in.

  Barbara Hammer

  Adventure, Garden, Creative

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

  Anton Chekhov

  Wise, Book, Blessing

  Anton Chekhov (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated)”, p.2020, Delphi Classics

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• Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

  Jonathan Swift

  Book, Omission, Authorship

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• I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description

  James Joyce

  Men, Unjust, Harsh

  James Joyce (1966). “Letters”

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• This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity

  Voltaire

  Poetry, Odes, Destination

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• A man who cannot win fame in big own age will have a very small chance of winning it from posterity. True, there are some half-dozen exceptions to this truth among millions of myriads that attest it; but what man of common sense would invest any large amount of hope in so unpromising a lottery?

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Winning, Men, Common Sense

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• The best time for marriage will be towards thirty, for as the younger times are unfit, either to choose or to govern a wife and family, so, if thou stay long, thou shalt hardly see the education of thy children, who, being left to strangers, are in effect lost; and better were it to be unborn than ill-bred; for thereby thy posterity shall either perish, or remain a shame to thy name.

  Walter Raleigh

  Children, Names, Wife

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• When the great Kepler bad at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed: "Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is a matter that concerns them more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God Himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Discovery, Years, Law

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• Glory is a shroud that posterity often tears from the shoulders of those who wore it when living.

  Pierre-Jean de Beranger

  Tears, Glory, Shoulders

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• It was a wise and useful provision of the ancients to transmit their thoughts to posterity by recording them in treatises, so that they should not be lost, but, being developed in succeeding generations through publications in books, should gradually attain in later times, to the highest refinement of learning.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Wise, Book, Generations

  "De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture)". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Book VII, Introduction, Section 1), circa 15 BC.

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• I have pledged my word to help people on to truth while living and - will keep my word. Let them abuse and revile me. Let some call me a medium, and a Spiritualist, and others an imposter. The day will come when posterity will learn to know me better.

  H. P. Blavatsky

  People, Abuse, Helping

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• The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Artist, Imagination, Track

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.153

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• Posterity--the forlorn child of nineteenth century optimism--grows ever harder to conceive.

  Mason Cooley

  Children, Optimism, Century

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• There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees. It argues, I think, a sweet and generous nature to have his strong relish for the beauties of vegetation, and this friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest. He who plants a tree looks forward to future ages, and plants for posterity. Nothing could be less selfish than this.

  Washington Irving

  Sweet, Strong, Selfish

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• Warm weather fosters growth: cold weather destroys it. Thus a man with an unsympathetic temperament has a scant joy: but a man with a warm and friendly heart overflowing blessings, and his beneficence will extend to posterity.

  Zicheng Hong

  Heart, Men, Blessing

  Zicheng Hong, Tze-chiang Chao (1959). “A Chinese Garden of Serenity: Epigrams from the Ming Dynasty "Discourses on Vegetable Roots"”

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• Again and again [Tomas] Jefferson deftly sidesteps many of [John] Adams's often provocative remarks. They both felt the correspondence, which was written for posterity, was too important to risk by being too candid with one another.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Risk, Important, Provocative

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

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