"Posterity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... triumphant, heaven-high. But the Paragraphs again ebbed out, as unwise Paragraphs needs must: Sir Jabesh lies stranded, sunk and forever sinking in ignominious ooze; the Mud-nymphs, and ever-deepening bottomless Oblivion, his portion to eternal time. 'Posterity?' Thou appealest to Posterity, thou? My right honourable friend, what will Posterity do for thee! The voting of Posterity, were it continued through centuries in thy favour, will be quite inaudible, extra-forensic, without ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... very well that our ancestors the Scythians, and their posterity our kinsmen the Tartars, lived upon the blood, and milk, and raw flesh of their cattle, without one grain of corn; but I confess myself so degenerate, that I am not easy without ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... up the kettle with salt water. As for what happened in ninety-three or ninety-four, I really would inform the reader if I knew; but I am afraid that that most curious story is never to be handed down to posterity. ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... his love of her, would creep now and again like a cloud over the sunshine of his face—Matt, too, would be redeemed from his long disappointment, and renewed in strength as he saw a purpose in his life's struggle, even the welfare of his posterity. These thoughts, and many others, all passed through Miriam's mind as she stood looking out from the ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... occasions, in arranging the caravans in the wonted horse-shoe shape. At the square end of the horse-shoe, so to speak, stretched the imposing canvas screen, painted in a most elaborate style, by the hand of some artist whose name unhappily has not been preserved for the benefit of posterity. There you might see the sheep-like lion, and the pig-like bear; leopards like short-legged zebras, and monkeys most unpleasantly like human beings. Indeed, ill-natured persons had been heard to declare one picture of a very lean ancient ourang-outang bore a strong resemblance ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... Sylvia, are you to me? No ties of blood forbid my passion; and what's a ceremony imposed on man by custom? What is it to my divine Sylvia, that the priest took my hand and gave it to your sister? What alliance can that create? Why should a trick devised by the wary old, only to make provision for posterity, tie me to an eternal slavery? No, no, my charming maid, 'tis nonsense all; let us, (born for mightier joys) scorn the dull beaten road, but let us love like the first race of men, nearest allied to God, promiscuously ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... under his wing, to escape a scolding from Agnes. I had arranged to pay calls with her this afternoon. I wonder how it is that my memory is so dreadfully uncertain about things I don't want to do! Good-bye then, Jack, and a hundred thanks. Posterity will thank you ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the tendency toward tremendous expenditures for military purposes in the western hemisphere. It presages at least partial disarmament by governments that have been, and still are, piling up enormous debts for posterity to liquidate, and insures to multitudes of men now involuntarily doing service in armies and navies employment ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... to one another when we live no longer save in the past and in the future, for, as regards myself, I, in anticipation, lay no store by the approbation of the circles which will surround us in our old age, and I desire nothing among posterity but a tomb to which I may precede M. Necker, and on which you will write the epitaph. Such resting-place will be dearer to me than that among the poplars which cover the ashes ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Germany, rendered a great service to posterity by ordering that copies of many of the ancient national manuscripts should be made. These copies were placed in the imperial library at Vienna, where, after several centuries of almost complete neglect, they were discovered by lovers of early literature, in a very satisfactory state of preservation. ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... some remarks on the first appearance of the rainbow to the inhabitants of the earth after the deluge. He says, "How proper and how apposite a sign would this be for Providence to pitch upon, to confirm the promise made to Noah and his posterity, that the world should be no more destroyed by water! It had a secret connexion with the effect itself, and was so far a natural sign; but, however, appearing first after the deluge, and in a watery cloud, there was, methinks, a great easiness and propriety of application ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... resolution from the Lords and Commons that the Queen should, without more delay, in keeping with her oft- expressed resolve and the promise of her Council, appoint one who should succeed to the throne in case of her death "without posterity." Her faithful people pleaded with her gracious Majesty to forego unwillingness to marry and seek a consort worthy of her supreme consideration, to be raised to a place beside her near that throne which she had made the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 6, 1789, it was found that every elector had cast a ballot for George Washington. On April 30 he took the oath of office in Federal Hall on Wall Street, New York, and Maclay records for the benefit of posterity that "he was dressed in deep brown, with metal buttons with an eagle on them, white stockings, a bag, and sword." As the presidency was an entirely new office, there was much difficulty and some squabbling over the details of his place. The question of title was raised; ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... these countries jumpers and dancers, who every moment jumped and danced in the streets, squares or market-places, and even in the churches. The convulsionaries of our own days seem to have revived them; posterity will be surprised at them, as we laugh at them now. Towards the end of the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth century, nothing was talked of in Lorraine but wizards and witches. For a long time we have heard nothing ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Prevost was not the man to safeguard British honour during the supreme ordeal of a war; and if he had lived in earlier times, when nicknames were more apt to become historic, he might well have gone down to posterity as Prevost ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... extreme degree, some curious exceptions to the rule have been observed, both with crossed races and species. Thus Boitard and Corbie[209] assert that from a Pouter and a Runt "a Cavalier will appear, which we have classed amongst pigeons of pure race, because it transmits all its qualities to its posterity." The editor of the 'Poultry Chronicle'[210] bred some bluish fowls from a black Spanish cock and a Malay hen; and these remained true to colour "generation after generation." The Himalayan breed of rabbits ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... beneath its roof, and through the fire and blood of a seven years' Revolutionary war, shrunk from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice to save his country and to raise his children to a condition better than his own, may my name and the name of my posterity be blotted forever from the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... night, and Urbain doesn't like the early morning air. I don't remember ever in my life to have seen him before noon—before breakfast. No one ever saw him. We don't know how he is then. Perhaps he's different. Who knows? Posterity, perhaps, will know. That's the time he works, in his cabinet, at the history of the Princesses. But I had to send for them—hadn't I? And then I want to see my mother sit there where you sit, and say good-by to her. Perhaps, after ...
— The American • Henry James
... my own views. No one will ever persuade me that either your father, Paulus, or two grandfathers, Paulus and Africanus, or the father of Africanus, or his uncle, or the many distinguished men whom it is unnecessary to recount, aimed at such great exploits as might reach to the recollection of posterity had they not perceived in their mind that posterity belonged to them. Do you suppose, to boast a little of myself, after the manner of old men, that I should have undergone such great toils, by day and night, at home and in service, had I thought to limit my glory by the same bounds ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... the idea of a national intoxication. In this world, vices on a grand scale dilate into virtues; he who murders one man, is strung up with ignominy; but he who murders twenty thousand has a statue to his memory, and is handed down to posterity as a hero. A staggering individual is a laughable and, sometimes, a disgusting spectacle; but the whole of a vast continent reeling, offering a holocaust of its brains for mercies vouchsafed, is an appropriate tribute of gratitude ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in blackening his character and in misrepresenting all the transactions and incidents of his life, will it not be a most difficult, nay an impossible task, for posterity, after a lapse of 1700 years, if such a wreck of modern literature as that of the ancient, should intervene, to identify the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the man? And will a true historian, such as the Evangelists, be credited ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... domain that in its extremest length measured sixty geographical miles! We may now judge of the condescending wonder with which the brother of Darius listened to the ambassadors of a people, by whose glory alone his name is transmitted to posterity. Yet was there nothing unnatural or unduly arrogant in his reply. "Send Darius," said the satrap, affably, "earth and water (the accustomed symbols of homage), and he will accept your alliance." The ambassadors deliberated, and, impressed by the might of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... listened to what he said, and answered, if you are able to perform what you promise, I will enrich you and your posterity; and, besides the presents I shall make you, you shall be my chief favourite. Do you assure me, then, that you will cure me of my leprosy, without making me take any potion, or applying any external medicine? Yes, sir, replies the physician, I promise myself success, through God's assistance, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... suffices me in a large room, he would see a man in a coat 'still more threadbare than his own' when he wrote his 'Imitation,' working hard and getting little—a bare maintenance, and hardly that; writing poems and history for posterity with his whole heart and soul; one daily progressive in learning, not so learned as he is poor, not so poor as proud, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... hearts of our enemies and lend them the first ray of real hope that ultimate separation will be their purchased peace. We will not here draw a picture of that fallacious peace, that suicidal gap, whose festering political sore would breed misery and ruin, not only for ourselves, but for our posterity, for ages to come. But let us be warned in time. Even now the insidious movement of dissension is hailed with satisfaction and delight in the council meetings at Richmond, and no effort will be spared to aid its devastating progress. False rumors will be raised ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... everywhere of interdicts, but nowhere of concessions. Old things destroyed, but nothing created to replace them. What will be the result of this? Austria must soon be reduced to a mass of ruins, and your son will go down to posterity with a fame like that of Attila. Save Austria! save him from the curse that threatens both. We have not yet completed the noble edifice of which eleven years ago we laid the foundations. We must finish the structure, and so solid must be its walls that our thoughtless ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... to recommend the repeal of the tax of four pounds of tobacco per poll which formerly had been levied for the Governor's use. The Assembly acknowledged this as "a benefit descending unto us and our posterity ... contributed to us by our present Governor." Berkeley abolished certain other valuable emoluments due him by virtue of his office "wherein," the Assembly declared, "we may not likewise silence the bounty of our present Governor ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... could have told me, for he had a marvellous memory, but he died, a pleasant old gentleman of four-score and upwards, when I was a small urchin. I remember his lively old face, his powdered bald head and pigtail, his slight erect figure, and how merrily he used to play the fiddle for his juvenile posterity to dance to. But I was not of an age to comprehend the value of this thin, living volume of old lore, or to question the oracle. Well, it can't be helped now, and the papers I've got are silent upon the point. But there were ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... square at the base. The Egyptian priests called these obelisks the sun's fingers, because they served as stiles or gnomons to mark the hours on the ground. In the first ages of the world they were made use of to transmit to posterity the principal precepts of philosophy, which were engraven ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... open assaults of enemies, and the more dangerous treachery of friends, have the inhabitants of your island, your great and glorious ancestors, maintained their independence, and transmitted the rights of men and the blessings of liberty to you their posterity. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... sixteenth. This MSS. was procured by that great restorer of learning Pope Leo X., under whose patronage it was printed at Rome in 1515; he afterwards deposited it in the Vatican library, where it is still preserved. Thus posterity is probably indebted to the above magnificent Pontiff, for the most valuable part of the works of ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... and be governed by it, no matter how disagreeable it may be, no matter how roughly it may trample down our pet doctrines and our preconceived theories. The nineteenth century left us a glorious heritage in the great discoveries and inventions that science has established. These must not be lost to posterity; but far better lose them than lose the spirit of free inquiry, the spirit of untrammeled investigation, the noble devotion to truth for its own sake that made these discoveries ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... gentlemanly Christian, Mr. Browbeater, be rewarded for it! And may the day never come when he shall require to tread in the footsteps of the devil!' Indeed, my lord, I cannot help crying amen to this, and adding, that the remembrance of his virtues may descend and reflect honor on his posterity, as, I have no doubt, they will do. How few like him could transfuse the spirit of the Tipperary assassin into the moral principles of the Castle, for useful purpose? I beg to inclose, your lordship, Mr. Hartley's ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Bishop Butler died in the communion of the Church of England. The bishop has now been in his grave more than a hundred years; but Warburton says truly, "How light a matter very often subjects the best-established characters to the suspicions of posterity—how ready is a remote age to catch at a low revived slander, which the times that brought it forth saw despised and forgotten almost in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... kind of Grillparzer revival; and belated honors brought some solace to his old age. But he had become an historical figure long before he ceased to be seen on the streets of his beloved Vienna, and the three completed manuscripts of plays that in 1872 he bequeathed to posterity had lain untouched ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... his forehead, fire in his eye, constantly seeking darkness and secrecy, and only emerging from his solitude to make solitude. After all, in a free government, the Laws and the Constitution are above the Incapables, the Courts correct their legislation, and posterity is the Grand Inquest that passes judgment on them. What is the exclusion of worth and intellect and knowledge from civil office compared with trials before Jeffries, tortures in the dark caverns of the Inquisition, Alva-butcheries in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... where they hammered upon each other's skulls with huge battle-axes, and drove the dagger between the bars of the closed visor? Were not those heroic feats of arms? was not that a courage worthy to be chronicled to all posterity? But our young people want to see new things; they are not satisfied with their own native land: they must wander through Germany, make tours in France. Worse still, they abandon science and its noble fields for trade, arts, industry, ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... not live with his wife; and Sir Austin, whose mind was bent on the future of our species, reproached him with being barren to posterity, while knaves were propagating. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... perhaps exaggerated; for he could see enough to condemn a portrait of himself. He expressed some annoyance when Reynolds had painted him with a pen held close to his eye; and protested that he would not be handed down to posterity as "blinking Sam." It seems that habits of minute attention atoned in some degree for this natural defect. Boswell tells us how Johnson once corrected him as to the precise shape of a mountain; and Mrs. Thrale ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... wrote it has been allowed to remain in unmerited obscurity. The Pacific coast alone, in one of the most beautiful of personal monuments,* has acknowledged his service to his country—a service which will terminate only with that country's life; for he who gives a nation its popular air, enfeoffs posterity with an inalienable gift. Yet Key was the close personal friend of Jackson, Taney,—who was his brother-in-law—John Randolph of Roanoke, and William Wilberforce. He it was, in all probability, who first thought out the scheme of the African Colonization Society; the first, ...
— The Star-Spangled Banner • John A. Carpenter
... is a will, however, which bequeaths whatever is left of his funds to an orphan home. Being a sonless father, he thinks of the sons who have no fathers to do for them what he was so fain to do for his. It is not a large fund for these days when rich men toss millions as tips to posterity, but it is pretty good for a shoe clerk. And it will mean everything to some Eric that ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... incorruptibility of his genius. Of all the qualities of a great man of his age, he was only wanting in honesty. The people were not his devotees, but his instruments,—his own glory was the god of his idolatry; his faith was posterity; his conscience existed but in his thought; the fanaticism of his idea was quite human; the chilling materialism of his age had crushed in his heart the expansion, force, and craving for imperishable things. His dying words were "sprinkle me with perfumes, crown me with flowers, that I may thus ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... is subjective. It has no objective validity. A moral conduct highly valued by our fathers is now held to be immoral by us. Immoral acts now strongly denounced by us may be regarded as moral by our posterity. Good deeds of the savage are not necessarily good in the eyes of the civilized, nor evil acts of the Orientals are necessarily evil before the face of the Occidentals. It follows, then, that there is no definite standard of morality in ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the important hour, shed all the consecrated ointment on his head. There is one, Mazzini, who understands thee well; who knew thee no less when an object of popular fear, than now of idolatry; and who, if the pen be not held too feebly, will help posterity to know thee too. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... put his thoughts down on paper are in themselves inadequate to serve as a means of recording more than a shadow of his masterpiece as it was originally conceived. Of course, we are speaking now in a large sense—we are imagining that the composer is a Beethoven with an immortal message to convey to posterity. Of all composers, Beethoven was perhaps the one to employ the most perfect means of expression. His works represent a completeness, a poise and a masterly finish which will serve as a model for all time to come. It must also be noted that few composers have employed more accurate ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... not alone for himself, but with full and conscious purpose for posterity also, was he not worthy to wear the mantle of ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Paltry craft won command to Themistocles; to escape his duns, the profligate Caesar heads an army, and achieves his laurels; Brutus, the aristocrat, stabs his patron, that patricians might again trample on plebeians, and that posterity might talk of him. The love of posthumous fame—what is it but as puerile a passion for notoriety as that which made a Frenchman I once knew lay out two thousand pounds in sugar-plums? To be talked of—how poor a desire! Does ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... long with grave and musing eyes, read the title- page, and glanced over the contents. "Scharnhorst," he then said, solemnly, "this is a great and important work, and posterity only will appreciate its whole importance, and thank you deservedly for it. Our old military structure was utterly rotten, and the first storm, therefore, caused it to break down and fall to pieces. But Scharnhorst is an architect who knew how to find among the ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... morning when they seek the leader they find him sitting on a bench in the castle park of Fehrbellin, whither the moonlight had enticed the sleep walker. He sits absorbed with bared head and open breast, "Both for himself and his posterity, he dreams the splendid crown of fame to win." Still further, the laurel for this crown he himself must have obtained during the night from the electoral greenhouse. The electress thinks, "As true as I'm alive, this man is ill!" an opinion in which the princess Natalie ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... country-houses and estates I have yet seen in England, I think this is by far the best. Everything undertaken eventuates in a most magnificent hospitality; and you will be pleased to hear that our celebrated fellow citizen General Boxall (Pittsburg, Penn.) is engaged in handing down to posterity the face of the owner of the mansion and of his youthful son and daughter. At a future time it will be my duty to report on the turnips, mangel-wurzel, ploughs, and live stock; and for the present I will only say that I regard it as ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Rochester, was the third clerical Commissioner. He was a man to whose talents posterity has scarcely done justice. Unhappily for his fame, it has been usual to print his verses in collections of the British poets; and those who judge of him by his verses must consider him as a servile imitator, who, without one spark of Cowley's admirable genius, mimicked whatever was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... they had quite forgotten that the more a man was in "an excitement," the less he had to do with reason. The exaggerated religious sects, which first peopled America, have had a strong influence in transmitting to their posterity false notions on such subjects; for while the old world is accustomed to see Christianity used as an ally of government, and perverted from its one great end to be the instrument of ambition, cupidity, and selfishness, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... reading the above, Mr. Hipkins remarked: "I fancy this dinner resembled the dinner which will go down to posterity as given by the Hungarians of London to Liszt in [1886], which was really a private dinner given by Mrs. Bretherton to fifteen people, of whom her children and mine were ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... this generation of your fellowmen and posterity also may not misunderstand your position, the National American Woman Suffrage Association urges you to supplement your proclamation with answers to the following questions: Do you challenge the fact which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... consort from Smee's brush? When Charles II. picked up Titian's mahl-stick, he observed to a courtier, 'A king you can always have; a genius comes but rarely.' While we have a Smee among us, and a monarch whom we admire,—may the one be employed to transmit to posterity the beloved features of the other! We know our lucubrations are read in high places, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... about the Court of King Charles, and King James, have told the present writer a number of stories about this queer old lady, with which it's not necessary that posterity should be entertained. She is said to have had great powers of invective and, if she fought with all her rivals in King James's favor, 'tis certain she must have had a vast number of quarrels on her hands. She was a woman of an intrepid spirit, and, it appears, pursued and rather fatigued ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... senses). All! Caesar: will you go down to posterity as a barbarous soldier too ignorant to ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... common to talk of the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome is greater to-day in the perpetuity of her institutions than during the glorious days of the republic or of the magnificent rule of the Caesars. Rome also left a questionable inheritance to the posterity of nations. The idea of imperialism revived in the empire of Charlemagne, and later in the Holy Roman Empire, and, cropping out again and again in the monarchies of new nations, has not become extinct to this day. The recent World War gave a great shock to the idea of czarism. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... betray'd: With princes fill'd, the solemn fane ascends, By Infamy, the mindful demon sway'd. There vengeful vows for guardian laws effaced, From nations fetter'd, and from towns laid waste, For ever through the spacious courts resound: There long posterity's united groan, And the sad charge of horrors not their own, Assail the giant chiefs, and ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;—and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar[200] is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to such a system of government as I had ever most esteemed, and in some States, my own native State in particular, had contributed to establish. Claiming a right of suffrage common with my fellow-citizens in the adoption or rejection of a constitution, which was to rule me and my posterity, as well as them and theirs, I did not hesitate to express my approbation of it on all occasions, in public and in private. It was not then, nor has been since, any objection to it, in my mind, that the Executive and Senate ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... great as this, have once triumphed in existence, had their victories as great, joy as just and as unbounded; and, with short-sighted presumption, promised themselves immortality! Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some; the sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others; and, as he beholds, he learns wisdom, and feels the transience of every ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... bassi-relievi of vast size, which represented, in the consecrated manner, the victorious Pharaoh scourging his enemies and trampling them under foot; immense pages of history carved with a chisel on colossal stone books which the most distant posterity was yet to read. These buildings rose much higher than the pylons. The cornices, curving outwards and topped with great stones so arranged as to form battlements, showed superbly against the crest of the Libyan Mountains, which formed ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... nation, and to that cause he was determined to devote both life and fortune. If those who were more powerful were equally prompt, he trusted they would deserve the thanks of their King, and the gratitude of posterity." ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... friendships, in his refused fame, in his blighted name, in his memory accursed. He took all—bore all—for the sake of the triumph of the independence of human reason. Devotion does not change its worth in changing its cause, and this was his virtue in the eyes of posterity. He was not the truth, but he was its precursor, and walked in ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... twopence coloured impression of Kings and Queens, who were only creatures of their age, less admirable expressions of the individualism of their time. And just as historical facts require readjustment by posterity, so our critical estimate of intellectual and aesthetic evolution requires strict revision. We must not accept the glib statement of the historian, especially of the contemporary historian, that at certain periods intellectual activity and artistic expression were ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... and Clay, the Whig party, like a headless army, was broken and dispersed. Its victories and defeats are alike things of the past. Its history is written in the annals of the nation. The question of its patriotism is enrolled in the Capitol. Posterity will do it justice. ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... struck so deep into the ground that no one of many that tried could pluck it up; and the soil, being fertile, gave nourishment to the wood, which sent forth branches, and produced a cornel-stock of considerable bigness. This did posterity preserve and worship as one of the most sacred things; and therefore, walled it about; and if to any one it appeared not green nor flourishing, but inclining to pine and wither, he immediately made outcry to all ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... seems a rather unusual bequest, but you know I had a conceited hope that some time they might be valuable. I don't know whether they would have sold for three thousand pounds—I admit it was a draft on posterity that posterity might have dishonoured—but I thought they might possibly go a little way towards ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... known—quarrelled bitterly over politics. Hogarth caricatured Wilkes in the Times: Wilkes replied by a North Briton article (No. 17) so scurrilous and malignant that Hogarth was stung into rejoining with that famous squint-eyed semblance of his former crony, which has handed him down to posterity more securely than the portraits of Zoffany and Earlom. Wilkes's action upon this was to reprint his article with the addition of a bulbous-nosed woodcut of Hogarth "from the Life." These facts lent interest to an entry which for years had been familiar to me in ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... constitution,—"a fabric of government which time could not destroy and the latest posterity would admire." This was the boast of the National Assembly, echoed by the English clubs. Even Mr. Fox, as late as April, 1791, misled by his own magniloquence, spoke of it as "the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which had been erected on the foundation of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... should be far less unwelcome than that which starts with the dregs of both races. But the negroid hair and complexion being, in Mendelian language, "dominant," these black traits are not easy to eliminate from the hybrid posterity; and in view of all the unpleasantness, both immediate and contingent, that attends the blending of colours, only heroic souls on either side should dare the adventure of intermarriage. Blacks of this temper, however, would serve their race better by making ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... public familiarity with Chretien's work is due to the almost complete lack of translations of his romances into the modern tongues. The man who, so far as we know, first recounted the romantic adventures of Arthur's knights, Gawain. Yvain, Erec, Lancelot, and Perceval, has been forgotten; whereas posterity has been kinder to his debtors, Wolfram yon Eschenbach, Malory, Lord Tennyson, and Richard Wagner. The present volume has grown out of the desire to place these romances of adventure before the reader of English in a prose version based directly upon the oldest ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... whole range of English history there is no monarch whose character has been more variously depicted by contemporaries or more strenuously debated by posterity than the "majestic lord who broke the bonds of Rome". To one historian an inhuman embodiment of cruelty and vice, to another a superhuman incarnation of courage, wisdom and strength of will, Henry VIII. has, by an almost universal ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... which I am going to entrust you with; you must add to it; you must make your son Sylvest swear to increase it in his turn, so that the children of your grandchildren may imitate their fore-fathers, and may themselves be imitated by their posterity. Here is the collection. The first roll contains the story of all that has chanced to our family up to the anniversary of my dear Hena's birthday, that day which also saw her die. This other roll I received this evening about sunset from my son Albinik ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... be the judgment pronounced by posterity upon the events of this, so to speak, extra-human existence, the character of Prince Dakkar would ever remain as one of those whose memory time can ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... all nations are melted into a new race of men whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour and industry which began long since in the East; they will finish the great circle. The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... from college, often leave in the room which they last occupied, pictures, looking-glasses, chairs, &c., there to remain, and to be handed down to the latest posterity. Articles thus ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... natural law of love, a young woman may see in the object of her affection her ideal of perfection in humanity, she owes volitional conformity to a higher law than natural affinity. She owes to herself, to posterity and to her country a careful study of the character of the young man to whom she should ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... edition of Mr. Carlyle's works may be taken for the final presentation of all that the author has to say to his contemporaries, and to possess the settled form in which he wishes his words to go to those of posterity who may prove to have ears for them. The canon is definitely made up. The golden Gospel of Silence is effectively compressed in thirty fine volumes. After all has been said about self-indulgent mannerisms, moral perversities, phraseological outrages, and the rest, these volumes will remain ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... swamped in a family, and the same with George Eliot. If they had married each other, as Herbert says they might (had Georgie been better-looking), philosophical and imaginative genius would have been lost in getting the meals and bending posterity over the parental knee to make sin seem undesirable. I had always felt that Jim was cut out to get married, and I stood ready to help him through the entire catalogue of crime and conspiracy, for I knew he could not undertake so much alone ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... confiscation was especially cruel, inasmuch as it affected the posterity of the condemned heretics. According to the old Roman law, the property of heretics could be inherited by their orthodox sons, and even by their agnates and cognates.[1] The laws of the Middle Ages declared confiscation absolute; on the plea that heresy should be classed with treason, ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... said[5] when he was brought before the King of Dardania), I will trace a third book with the pen of Aesop, and dedicate it to you, in acknowledgment of your honor and your goodness.[6] If you read it, I shall rejoice; but if otherwise, at least posterity will have something ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... farthest away in the bush. "Why have a mad desire to become an ancestor for people you don't know and may dislike?" I think I remember inquiring of you, as you sagely dilated—at ancient Smithtown—on the notable achievements of a certain Bull Rider Smith for the benefits of his posterity. He was doubtless a smart business man and a good sportsman, to gallop so far and fast on such an animal, when told he could have all the road he could ride round on bull-back in the course of a day. But to me his ambitions ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... and the prince for promise and presage, And laugh the laugh back, I think verily, Thine eyes being purged by tears of righteous rage To read a wrong into a prophecy, And measure a true great man's heritage Against a mere great-duke's posterity. I think thy soul said then, "I do not need A princedom and its quarries, after all; For if I write, paint, carve a word, indeed, On book or board or dust, on floor or wall, The same is kept of God who taketh heed ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Posterity know And knowing be astonished that On the 15th day of September 1784 Vincent Lunardi of Lusca in Tuscany The first aerial traveller in Britain Mounting from the Artillery Ground In London And Traversing ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... accident of birth," but it would puzzle anybody to tell what it means. If A takes B to wife, it is not an accident that he took B rather than C, D, or any other woman; and if A and B have a child, X, that child's ties to ancestry and posterity, and his relations to the human race, into which he has been born through A and B, are in no sense accidental. The child's interest in the question whether A should have married B or C is as material ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... seeing him twice. I come to the conclusion, then, that he must have been a substitute, and if I am wrong in my supposition I shall be glad to stand corrected. He was at any rate not sufficiently brilliant to get his name handed down to posterity, although it must be said of him that he was a fair average player, and did ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... may a little live spark of your own individual consciousness, when the full, quick flame of your actual life here below is extinguished, be handed down mildly incandescent to your remotest posterity. May it never quite go out—it need not! May you ever be able to say of yourself, from generation to generation, "Petit bonhomme vit encore!" and still keep one finger at least in the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... education would naturally be expected to revere the most, she was able to listen to him unshocked. But she little thought, or he either, that it was only in virtue of what Christian teaching she had had that she was capable of appreciating what was grand in his doctrine of living for posterity without a hope of good result to self beyond the consciousness that future generations of perishing men and women would be a little more comfortable, and perhaps a little less faulty therefrom. She did not reflect, either, that no one's theory concerning death ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... supplications to the great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the, land which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... believe that troubles and dangers for the glory of Christ and the good of the Church should be endured, and we are confident that this our fidelity to duty is approved of God, and we hope that the judgment of posterity concerning ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... him, Christ did not remain a king without subjects, a shepherd without a flock. In the exercise of the same sovereignty through which he chose Abraham at first, he passed over Abraham's degenerate posterity and called another family. This family was Abraham's seed, not by natural generation, but in the regeneration through faith. Of these stones he raised up children to Abraham, when the natural children of the family had through ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... divided into twenty-one books, inscribed on 12,000 cow skins, bound by golden cords. The Mohammedans destroyed it when they invaded Persia. But some Persian families, faithful to the teaching of Zoroaster, fled into India. Their posterity, whom we call Parsees, have there maintained the old religion. An entire book of the Zend-Avesta and fragments of two others have been ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... could see no reason in it. They were acutely alive to the sacrifices which it demanded in the present, and sceptical as to the advantages which it promised in the future. The idea of working for posterity does not naturally occur to half-civilised peoples; they live from hand to mouth, and are continually absorbed in the difficulties of the moment; they believe in the supremacy of chance or fate or providence, and speak of human forethought as presumptuous or merely futile. The imperial ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... in those days, for the bride's-man and maiden, and a few select friends, to visit the new-married couple after they had retired to rest, and drink a cup to their healths, their happiness, and a numerous posterity. But the laird delighted not in this: he wished to have his jewel to himself; and, slipping away quietly from his jovial party, he retired to his chamber to his beloved, and bolted the door. He found her engaged with the writings of the Evangelists, and terribly demure. The laird ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... of the "Siecle de Louis XIV."[17] is the first to speak of the man in the iron mask in an authenticated history. The reason is that he was very well informed about the anecdote which astonishes the present century, which will astonish posterity, and which is only too true. He was deceived about the date of the death of this singularly unfortunate unknown. The date of his burial at St. Paul was March 3rd, 1703, and not 1704. (Note.—According to ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... rights of their constituents, were part of the same system, and calculated and intended to drive the people of the colonies to a state of desperation, and to dissolve the compact by which their ancestors bound themselves and their posterity to remain dependent on the British crown. The resolutions, furthermore, recommended the most perfect union and co-operation among the colonies; solemn covenants with respect to non-importation and non-intercourse, and a renunciation of all dealings with ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Posterity has never severely criticised George Clinton's opposition to national development. His sincerity and patriotism have been accepted. To Washington and Hamilton, however, his conduct seemed like a cold and selfish desertion of his country ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... leave. I hope it may be said, a hundred years from now, that by working together we helped to make our country more just, more just for all of its people, as well as to insure and guarantee the blessings of liberty for all of our posterity. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... purification. These are not the enterprises of your power, nor in a style of magnificence suited to the taste of your minister. These are the monuments of real kings, who were the fathers of their people; testators to a posterity which they embrace as their own. These are the grand sepulchres built by ambition; but the ambition of an insatiable benevolence, which, not contented with reigning in the dispensation of happiness during the contracted term of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... book, and confess that I should be written down an ass, or turn to it to prove myself a prophet. From the eyrie I have chosen I expect to be able to write the story of the coming deluge. It will be of great value to posterity to have a calm, scientific account, quite free from any tinge of superstition or religion. I have to-day written my Boston skeptics, forwarding copies of my calculations, with references to former inundations, and ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... was the custom in those days for corporations, civic bodies, and associations of various kinds, to commemorate their period of office by commissioning portrait groups which should hand down their worthy faces to posterity. The desire of the less prominent members of the associations thus painted was that each head should be a likeness, plainly recognisable,—that one burgher should not be treated with more importance than another. This desire for present and posthumous commemoration extended ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... to solve the difficult problems of court life in Babylon. And albeit he secured no small measure of fame, and perhaps of popularity, at the time, these earthly results, in their abiding form, it has lain with posterity to ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... I will thank you for another cup of tea. What should we do without tea in this weary world? I declare it's the only pleasure left to me now—for, of all the ungrateful things in life, working for your posterity is the most ungrateful. Posterity is born to trample on one.... And now, sit down and tell me exactly how matters stand. My niece is greatly better, I hear. The doctor considers her quite convalescent? At least this is very ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... subsequent life, after life, approaching years, coming years, subsequent years, after years; morrow; millennium, doomsday, day of judgment, crack of doom, remote future. approach of time advent, time drawing on, womb of time; destiny &c. 152; eventuality. heritage, heirs posterity. prospect &c. (expectation) 507; foresight &c. 510. V. look forwards; anticipate &c. (expect) 507, (foresee) 510; forestall &c. (be early) 132. come on, draw on; draw near; approach, await, threaten; impend &c. (be destined) 152. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... President McKinley, his cabinet, and the American diplomatic corps in Europe did everything in their power to prevent the war. Just as long as possible the President clearly considered that his main claim on posterity would be for maintaining peace against pressure and clamor. Under orders from the State Department I met at Paris my old friend General Woodford, who was on his way to Spain as minister of the United ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... robberies, the most cruel murders, and infinite other atrocities perpetrated by convicts transported from Europe, what melancholy, what terrible reflections must it occasion! What will become of our posterity? These are some of thy favors, Britain! Thou art called our mother country; but what good mother ever sent thieves and villains to accompany her children; to corrupt some with their infectious vices, and murder the rest? What father ever endeavored to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... affectation of self-abasement. "No, no, Ellen, I am any thing but unfortunate. Unless, indeed, a man may be so called, whose fortune is made, whose fame may be said to be established for ever, whose name will go down to posterity with that of Buffon—Buffon! a mere compiler: one who flourishes on the foundation of other men's labours. No; pari passu with Solander, who bought his knowledge ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wint right to th' heart. That's wan reason I think a lot iv us likes Tiddy Rosenfelt that wudden't iver be suspicted iv votin' f'r him. Whin he does anny talkin'—which he sometimes does—he talks at th' man in front iv him. Ye don't hear him hollerin' at posterity. Posterity don't begin to vote till afther th' polls close. So whin he wished to convey to th' throlley man th' sintimints iv his bosom, he done it in wurruds suited to th' crisis, as Hogan wud say. They do say his ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... proper tone and vigor of body and mind, she is unexpectedly overtaken, surprised by the manifestation of symptoms which again indicate pregnancy. Children thus begotten cannot become hardy and long-lived. But the love that parents may feel for their posterity, by the wishes for their success, by the hopes for their usefulness, by every consideration for their future well-being, let them exercise caution and forbearance until the wife becomes sufficiently healthy and enduring to bequeath her own rugged, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... most prominent and the most eloquent of their number, presided at the feast. He had little, save the love of glory, to bind him to life, for he had neither father nor mother, wife nor child; and he doubted not that posterity would do him justice, and that his death would be the most glorious act of his life. No one could imagine, from the calm and subdued conversation, and the quiet appetite with which these distinguished men partook of the entertainment, that this was their last repast, and ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... established post communications for travellers and the mails, carried law and order into every obscure hamlet, consolidated a polity which, by sheer massiveness, lasted for generations after the soul of Rome had fled, and left to posterity, in her institutes the basis for modern jurisprudence. Thus Greece evolved a genius for art, developed architecture and sculpture to the highest perfection the world has seen, made statues thicker than men in ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... which it is our nature to desire. Whether this prospect of future good be the preparation for another existence I know not; or whether that it is merely that we, as workmen in God's vineyard, must lend a hand to smooth the way for our posterity. If it indeed be that; if the efforts of the virtuous now, are to make the future inhabitants of this fair world more happy; if the labours of those who cast aside selfishness, and try to know the truth of things, ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... our crops are more abundant when saturated with foreign perspiration. European sweat, if I may be allowed to use such a low term, is very good in its place, but the native-born Duke of Dakota, or the Earl of York State should remember that the matter of perspiration and posterity should not be left ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... two or three hours later. Houston carried the banjo, as Rutherford had his precious camera and a lot of plates, having declared his intention of immortalizing the occasion by taking a number of views for the benefit of their posterity. Miss Gladden had her guitar, and to the great astonishment of the gentlemen, Lyle appeared, carrying a fine old violin. It was Mike's, which she had borrowed for the occasion at the suggestion of Miss Gladden, and in reply to the expressions of wonder ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... share of glory in his lifetime, and posterity has ratified the verdict given by his contemporaries. The epitaph is well-known which Plato composed for him, after his death: "The Graces, seeking an imperishable sanctuary, found the soul of Aristophanes." Such eulogy may appear excessive ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the biographical notice in the Encyclopedia Britannica on Cicero, sends down to posterity a statement that in the time of the first triumvirate, when our hero was withstanding the machinations of Caesar and Pompey against the liberties of Rome, he was open to be bought. The augurship would have bought him. "So pitiful," says the biographer, "was the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... the neck of the giraffe, give snow-white lamb's clothing to the tiger, and turn the rudder of the beaver into the prehensile tail of the monkey. There is no biological completion, no finitude. It is only a matter of time—sufficient time—and our bodies may become as strangely interesting to posterity as are to us the dinosaurs and ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... minister to the correction and regeneration of the unfit and degenerate; so long as we tolerate grafting politicians and deprive the poor of breathing spaces, sanitary appliances, and a hygienic environment; so long as war and pestilence deprive posterity of the best of the race for parenthood; so long as we emphasize rescue rather than prevention, so long must the eugenist strive unceasingly to preach ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... for which posterity will thank Chevalier Bunsen is, that, in an age of bigotry and of skepticism, he has especially represented the union of Philosophy and Christianity, and has shown that the freest historical criticism ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... redoubtable Sarah, Duchess Dowager of Marlborough, who, when finding herself addressed as "O most illustrious Wife, and Parent of the Greatest, Best, and Loveliest! it was not sufficient for you to adorn Posterity with the Amiableness of every Virtue," etc., etc., may perhaps have recalled how her shining character had been blackened some twelve years before in a licentious volume called "Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... defy the wicked! We are the chosen people, and for that reason we must cry a halt! We will no longer do as we have done—for our wives' sakes, and our children's, and theirs again! Ay, but what is posterity to us? Of course it is something to us—precisely to us! Were your parents as you are? No, they were ground down into poverty and the dust, they crept submissively before the mighty. Then whence did we get all that makes us so strong and causes us to stand together? Time has stood still, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo |
