Posterity

“ Posterity has not been vouchsafed a picture of the yelling, chaffing horde of schoolboys; but posterity can see the same light-hearted crowd to-morrow, only in collars not invented in those days, and straw hats in place of the little black caps with the red creased badges. ”

“ To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity! To be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries! ”

“ As a general rule, all those who live by the public starve, and are made a bye-word and a standing jest into the bargain.—Posterity is no better (not a bit more enlightened or more liberal) except that you are no longer in their power, and that the voice of common fame saves them the trouble of deciding on your claims. The public now are the posterity of Milton and Shakespear. Our posterity will be the living public of a future generation. When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birth-day in set speeches. ”

“ But do you think posterity would applaud my giving such a price for such a painting with such a subject?”
“They could not do otherwise than greatly applaud your fine discrimination and admirable liberality,” responded the little man with all the enthusiasm of a picture-dealer.
“Then I must have it,” remarked Posthumous, as he paid the money; “posterity will reward my exertions.” ”

“ I allude not to criticisms and eulogiums from the press, but to voluntary communications from unknown correspondents, coming to me like voices out of darkness, and giving intimation of that which the ear of a poet is always hearkening onward to catch—the voice of posterity. ”

“ But I do trust that those frequent appeals which you have heard, those frequent instances in which you have been reminded that posterity will pass between the accused, his accusers, and his judges, will have no influence on your minds. A desire to secure the approbation of posterity is an honorable feeling, pervading every human breast, and is most inseparable from our nature: but to secure the approbation of posterity, we must take care to pursue the dictates of our own consciences, and, by doing justice here, trust to posterity to do us justice too. ”

“ Posterity, that impartial judge of human actions, will certainly preserve their names; but will tremble lest their spirits should be re-animated, and should again produce the melancholy catastrophes which past ages have witnessed. ”

“ The true answer is, that the same Providence who has hitherto guided and governed us, and averted all serious evils from the existing relation between the two races, will guide and govern our posterity. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. We have hitherto, with that blessing, taken care of ourselves. Posterity will find the means of its own preservation and prosperity. It is only in the most direful event which can befall this people, that this great interest, and all other of our greatest interests, would be put in jeopardy. ”

“ Posterity will acknowledge that virtue which preserved them free and happy; and while we enjoy the rewards and blessings of the faithful, the torrent of panegyrists will roll our reputations to that latest period, when the streams of time shall be absorbed in the abyss of eternity. ”

“ In his appearance, in his physiognomy, in thought and language, there was a mingling of grace and dignity of which even his adversaries felt the charm. If posterity is severe for the sovereign, it will be indulgent for the man. ”

“ Every writer that is fore and fit cherishes a natural expectation of being known to posterity. If that hope is fulfilled he will be known to posterity by his last portrait. Who knows Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes or Whitman as other than a venerable ruin? Who has in mind a middle-aged Hugo, or a young Goethe? It is with an effort that we grasp the fact that all these excellent gentlemen of letters were not born old. ”

“ So the care of posterity is most in them, that have no posterity. They that are the first raisers of their houses, are most indulgent towards their children; beholding them as the continuance, not only of their kind, but of their work ”

“ Let not then the vain shadows of the world's fatal decay keep us either from looking backward to the imitation of our noble predecessors or forward in providing for posterity, but as our predecessors worthily provided, for us, so let our posterity bless us in providing for them, it being still as uncertain to us what generations are still to ensue, as it was to our predecessors in their ages. ”

“ What dazzles, for the Moment spends its spirit:
What's genuine, shall Posterity inherit. ”

“ I had money enough to live on, and preferred addressing myself to posterity rather than to any except a very few of my own contemporaries. Those few I have always kept well in mind. I think of them continually when in doubt about any passage, but beyond those few I will not go. Posterity will give a man a fair hearing; his own times will not do so if he is attacking vested interests, and I have attacked two powerful sets of vested interests at once. [The Church and Science.] What is the good of addressing people who will not listen? ”

“ "I do not attach any exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life is there to be lived rather than to be written about. My aim is to search out the manifold experience that it offers, wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents. I look upon my writing as a graceful accomplishment which does not absorb but rather adds pleasure to existence. And as for posterity—damn posterity." ”

“ Is it a reason why their posterity should be? By no means. In proportion as the light of knowledge illuminates the mind, does man become capable of happiness, and of sooner estimating the worth of that Light which is infinite and eternal. ”

“ When the nineteenth century shall be long out of date, and centuries in general out of their teens, posterity will revert to our delineation of the heavy swell with pleasure undiminished, through the long succession of ages yet to come; the macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be forgotten, or remembered only in our graphic portraiture of the heavy swell. ”

“ Why tell posterity what posterity can never forget, until man has lost the records of the history of man?
We talk of monuments to Washington. Why is none erected? Is it for want of reverence for his memory? For want of love? For want of gratitude? These questions are reproachfully asked, from time to time, by novices in politics, who, in striving to signalize their patriotism, their enthusiasm, or their eloquence, do but signalize their ignorance of the human heart. Such appeals are always answered by silence. It is the answer dictated by the unsophisticated feelings of our countrymen. ”

“ Were my former associates now there—were there only three or four of those true-hearted men still laboring in the sun—I sometimes fancy that I should direct my world-weary footsteps thitherward, and entreat them to receive me for old friendship's sake. More and more I feel we struck upon what ought to be a truth. Posterity may dig it up and profit by it. ”

“ If it is true, as some one has said, that posterity begins at the frontier, these numerous and flattering distinctions, coming from all points of the horizon, are full of promise for the immortality of his work. ”

“ If my own countrymen with whom I live and converse, who look upon the same race of men, the same state of society, the same passing events with myself, receive not my offering, I presume not to look to posterity. ”

“ My lords, we are all elevated to a degree of importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it, more or less become the concern of posterity, if we are yet to hope for such a thing in the present state of the world as a recording, retrospective, civilized posterity ”

“ Will posterity believe that, in an age in which men whose gallantries were universally known, and had been legally proved, filled some of the highest offices in the State and in the army, presided at the meetings of religions and benevolent institutions, were the delight of every society, and the favourites of the multitude, a crowd of moralists went to the theatre, in order to pelt a poor actor for disturbing the conjugal felicity of an alderman? ”

“ Posterity will weigh, in even scales, your merits and demerits, when all present animosities and personal prejudices shall have subsided; and when the utility of our labours, whether in promoting wisdom or virtue, shall be unreservedly acknowledged. You may sleep in peace before this decision take place; but your children may live to witness it; and your name, in consequence, become a passport for them into circles of learning and worth. Let us now retreat; or, rather, walk round Lorenzo's grounds. ”

“ They may be awful people!” a contemporary is likely to remark, thus confusing the issue. For the appeal is not to posterity merely as living at a certain date, but as especially qualified to judge, a qualification most posterities have lacked. ”

“ Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity, and none will do it enthusiastically. —Posterity has done nothing for us; and, theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves. ”

“ We fancy that there were no such men, that could either add to or take anything away from him, but such there were. He indeed overlooks and commands the admiration of posterity, but he does it from the tableland of the age in which he lived. ”

“ Posterity will come and will pronounce on both book and commentary, if such old trash is still able to interest it. I venture to hope that it will judge the Essai as my grey head has judged it; for, as one advances in life, one assumes the equity of the future towards which one approaches. The book and the notes place me before the eyes of men such as I was at the commencement of my career and such as I am at the close of that career. ”

“ But what posterity will find difficult to believe, is the agitation of men's minds, and the effervescence of the passions, carried to such a pitch, as to stamp the French revolution with a character bordering on the marvellous—Yes; posterity will have reason to be astonished at the facility with which the human mind can be modified and made to pass from one extreme to another ”

“ The perpetuity by generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works, are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men; which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them, that have no posterity. ”

“ How far I have been in the right or in the wrong, I leave to the judgment of posterity, who shall be impartially informed; and who may draw some benefit from the knowledge of what I have seen; though few persons, I believe, profit much from history. Times seldom resemble one another enough to be very applicable ”

“ Such things have happened so often, and sometimes with such a disastrous effect, that one can but feel surprised at the almost universal support that the doctrine of the infallibility of posterity enjoys. ”

“ At the same time I have a great Respect for Posterity, and I always think with more Fear than Confidence, on the Judgment that will pass on my Works, if they are happy enough to reach it. All this does not hinder me from esteeming the great Men that live now. ”

“ Posterity has but an uncertain knowledge of his deeds, which are dim with the dust of antiquity; nothing but the last counsel of his wisdom has been rescued by tradition. For when he was in the last grip of death he took thought for his sons FRODE and HARALD, and bade them have royal sway, one over the land and the other over the sea, and receive these several powers, not in prolonged possession, but in yearly rotation. ”

“ All must agree that no man ever had a greater variety of matter worthy to be conveyed to posterity. I shall, therefore, give my best care to, so to paint my thoughts, and give such a dress of the story of my life, that tho' I shall talk of the Great, the Least shall not find cause of offence. ”

“ It is pleasant to find one's-self mentioned with friendship by those whom posterity will mention with admiration. Foreign nations are a kind of posterity, and among them you already reap the full reward of your fame. ”

“ When there has been some mysterious transaction, in which there is guilt and blame without any certainty of the person upon whom it ought to fall, you desire your subjects to be under no concern, and not to perplex themselves with conjectures, for Posterity will inquire into the matter, and disgrace those who deserve it. ”

“ Posterity will read us in the context of our ancestors, and we shall be thought as unemphatic and common-place as we think them. The truth is, we are poor judges of our own times, and have but little means of drawing true comparisons. ”

“ Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and his fellowmen is ever new, active, and immediate. ”

“ because posterity cannot do without it. ”

“ Toward the end he suffered one of those revolutions in valuations that sometimes upturn people of extreme prejudices. His will sets forth emphatically that he came tardily to realise that posterity is the best thing a man can leave behind him. ”

“ But he who considers the subject more attentively will discover that they are related to posterity as things already received and believed, not then for the first time imagined and offered to mankind. ”