#posterity

Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin. ↗

— P.D. James

#pessimism #posterity #the-future #men

Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. ↗

— John Quincy Adams

#cost #freedom #generation #good #hope

Never forget posterity when devising a policy. Never think of posterity when making a speech. ↗

— Robert Menzies

#forget #making #never #never forget #policy

Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed. ↗

— Julius Sterling Morton

#consumed #each #earth #exhausted #forests

The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity. ↗

— Jean Paul

#clearly #end #father #galleries #heard

Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justification enough for our hopes and dreams, although I wouldn't say that to a dying man. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#arts #dance #death #dream #dreams

Comfort me by a solemn Assurance, that when the little Parlour in which I sit at this Instant, shall be reduced to a worse furnished Box, I shall be read, with Honour, by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see. ↗

— Henry Fielding

#fame #posterity #writing #death

What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it. ↗

— Irvine Welsh

#political-commentary #politics #posterity #power #resistance

A thing which I regret, and which I will try to remedy some time, is that I have never in my life planted a walnut. Nobody does plant them nowadays—when you see a walnut it is almost invariably an old tree. If you plant a walnut you are planting it for your grandchildren, and who cares a damn for his grandchildren? ↗

— George Orwell

#legacy #plants #posterity #walnut #life

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. ↗

— Joseph Addison

#delivered #down #generation #genius #great