"Posterity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heard some dropping word of the part he was meant to fill, or that his own suspicion had taken alarm from certain directions the young lady gave as to the expression he was to assume, certain is it nothing could induce him to comply, and go down to posterity with the immortality ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... deportment, and the offspring of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day,) that they would compare favorably, in point of holiday keeping, with their descendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn again the forgotten art ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... elasticity of youth. Remorse for complicity in the crime then perpetrated co-operated with the persuasion of the uselessness and complete failure of the attempt to exterminate the Huguenots, and the consciousness of having incurred the indelible mark of hatred and detestation of an impartial posterity. Even in his sleeping hours the curse of the murdered victims pursued him and disturbed his rest. Neither by day nor by night could he banish the remembrance of the time when blood ran so freely ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... "Bath Chair." It is many a year since the scarlet book was laid aside; but it has had a long line of successors; and together they contain the record of what I have been, done, seen, and heard during thirty-eight years of chequered existence. Entertaining a strong and well-founded suspicion that Posterity would burn these precious volumes unread, I was moved, some few years ago, to compress into small compass the little that seemed worth remembering. At that time my friend Mr. James Payn was already confined to the house by the beginnings of what proved ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... has been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! 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! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient is, in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings which he probably expected to be immortal is every ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... and Han dynasties Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR was in general use amongst military commanders, but they seem to have treated it as a work of mysterious import, and were unwilling to expound it for the benefit of posterity. Thus it came about that Wei Wu was the first to write ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... "the tendency to paternity." How does the shrunken family come to live only for itself? In what way, in default of other interests,—homestead, domain, workshop, lasting local undertakings,—how does the heart, now deprived of its food by the lack of invisible posterity, fall back on affection for visible progeny?[5103] In a country where there are few openings, where careers are overcrowded, what are the effects of this paid idolatry[5104], and, to sum up in one phrase, in what way does the French system ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... but for a quarrel with her secretary, who had become much too independent, and had had to be peremptorily dismissed at a moment's notice. But the plan was a noble one, approved by the highest authorities; and Daphne, looking to posterity, anticipated the recognition that she herself might never live to see. For the rest she had given herself—with reservations—to the Feminist movement. It was not in her nature to give herself wholly to anything; and she was instinctively critical ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ancestors of the roses now blooming about me, and plucked from this very hedge. No wonder that the perfumes of Paradise are enchaliced in their hearts. Few flowers can boast such high and haughty lineage as these, the bright posterity of those transfigured love-tokens of centuries past. They are glorified for ever by association with the highest, purest phase of human relation. They have reached the apotheosis of flowerhood—the highest destiny vouchsafed to aught that grows. They have become ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... think, so grievous a loss to poetry since the death of Shelley. Some of us who knew him may live to be old men, but life is not likely to give us any richer memory than his; and the passion and shapely zest that are in his work will pass safely to the memory of posterity." Mr. Wilfrid Gibson's tribute took the form of a short poem ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... cowardice, say so at once, sire, and we will leave you,—we who are the only individuals who are left,—nay, I will say more, the only models of the valor of former times; we who have done our duty, and have exceeded, perhaps, in courage and in merit, the men already great for posterity. Choose, sire! and that, too, without delay. Whatever relics remain to you of the great nobility, guard them with a jealous eye; you will never be deficient in courtiers. Delay not—and send me to the Bastile with my friend; for, if you did not know how to listen to the Comte de la Fere, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... common, and how bitter is the outcry against our first parent, for the mischief which he not only brought upon himself, but entailed upon his latest posterity! It was by his wilful rebellion against God "that sin entered into the world." "By one man's disobedience," as the apostle observes, the many, as many as were then in the loins of their forefathers, were made, or constituted sinners: not only ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... Wellington, will be as trustworthy as on the day they were written. Yet some suspicion may arise in our minds, that these commanders and historians might have kept back some important events which would have dimmed their reputation with posterity, or might have colored those they have related, so as to add to their fame. Of the great facts related in memoirs addressed to their companions in arms, able at a glance to detect a falsehood, we never ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... 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 with which to ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... and I felt a satisfaction in placing my hand on those immense blocks of stone, the remains of the ancient Capitol, which form the foundation of the present edifice, and will make a sure basis for as many edifices as posterity may choose to rear upon it, till the end of the world. It is wonderful, the solidity with which those old Romans built; one would suppose they contemplated the whole course of Time as the only limit of their individual life. This is not so strange in the days of the Republic, when, probably, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... method of his own. He mounted it in an equatorial instrument of such surpassing excellence as enabled him, aided by his devotion and pure love of the subject, to record a series of observations and results which will hand his name down to posterity as one of the most faithful and patient ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... leaden coffin probably), and there is scarcely room for a doubt that, with proper precautions, photographs of his face might be taken perfectly. Surely the end does justify the means here. It is not to satisfy mere idle curiosity. It is not mere relic- mongering; it is simply to secure for posterity what we could give— an exact representation of the great poet as he lived and died. Surely this is justifiable, at least it is allowable, in the absence of any authentic portrait. Surely such a duty might be most reverently done. I doubt after all if ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... maintained her right to be saluted by the ships of all other nations, and the learned Selden supported the English, asserting that they had a hereditary and uninterrupted right to the sovereignty of the seas, conveyed to them by their ancestors in trust for their latest posterity. During this period numerous colonies were settled, and the commerce of England extended in all directions by her brave navigators. The navy was not neglected, twenty ships being added by the king, and 50,000 pounds voted for the maintenance of ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... necessary is to find the dog a bad name. The world will see that he never loses it. In this regard the oft-reiterated confidence of the dead in the justice of posterity is one of the most pathetic of illusions. "Posterity will see me righted," cries some poor victim of human wrong, as he goes down into the darkness; but of all appeals, the appeal to posterity ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... for permission to leave a city in which there was no security for their lives, Charles swore to them, with his accustomed profanity, that he would inflict upon the author and abettors of the crime so signal a punishment that Coligny and his friends would be satisfied, and posterity have a warning example. Coligny had received the wound, he said, but the smart was his. Catharine, who was present, chimed in, and declared the outrage so flagrant, that just retribution must speedily be meted out, or insolence would ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... past, now happily for evermore replaced by mutuality. It has sometimes seemed to me that it was Nature's provision to keep the race alive in periods of its evolution when life was not worth living save for a far-off posterity's sake. This end, we may say, she shrewdly secured by vesting the aggressive and appropriating power in the sex relation in that sex which had to bear the least part of the consequences resultant on its exercise. We may call the device a rather mean one on Nature's part, but it was well ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Huxley exclaims: "My only consolation lies in the reflection that, however bad our posterity may become, so far as they hold by the plain rule of not pretending to believe what they have no reason to believe, because it may be to their advantage so to pretend [the word 'pretend' is surely here redundant], ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... He had to relate the murder of an innocent man of advanced age, and in a station deemed venerable by a considerable body of the provincials of Africa, put to death because he refused to sacrifice to Jupiter. Instead of pointing the indignation of posterity against such an atrocious act of tyranny, he dwells, with visible art, on the small circumstances of decorum and politeness which attended this murder, and which he relates with as much parade as if they were the most ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... itself, actually beheading my royal old chimney—a regicidal act, which, were it not for the palliating fact that he was a poulterer by trade, and, therefore, hardened to such neck-wringings, should send that former proprietor down to posterity in the same cart ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... but such from mercy I exclude. But yet all is not done; Man disobeying, Disloyal, breaks his fealty, and sins Against the high supremacy of Heaven, Affecting God-head, and, so losing all, To expiate his treason hath nought left, But to destruction sacred and devote, He, with his whole posterity, must die, Die he or justice must; unless for him Some other able, and as willing, pay The rigid satisfaction, death for death. Say, heavenly Powers, where shall we find such love? Which of you will be mortal, to redeem Man's mortal crime, and just the unjust ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... for its good. That wonderful civilization I met with in Mizora, I may not be able to more than faintly shadow forth here, yet from it, the present age may form some idea of that grand, that ideal life that is possible for our remote posterity. Again and again has religious enthusiasm pictured a life to be eliminated from the grossness and imperfections of our material existence. The Spirit—the Mind—that mental gift, by or through which we think, reason, and suffer, is by one tragic and awful struggle ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... entirely opposed to a further dieting him down to complete moral emaciation, but are, on the contrary, prescribing a tonic, a roborating, a natural regime for him —advice for which both doctors have been reproached with Immorality by their contemporaries as well as by posterity. But the younger doctor has turned the tables upon their accusers, and has openly reproached his Nazarene colleagues with the Immorality of endangering life itself, he has clearly demonstrated to the world that their trustful and believing patient ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... these two gentlemen? We do not know, although this would be an excellent opportunity to hand down their names to posterity. All we can say is that the elder was an Englishman and the younger an American, and both of them were old ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... promises the safety of the single great purpose which it professes to desire. But we are not now to consider Bolivar, the deliverer, as one whose place in the pantheon has already been determined by the unerring judgment of posterity. We are to behold him only with those eyes in which he was seen by the devoted followers to whom he brought, or appeared to bring, the deliverance for which they yearned. It is with the eyes of the passionate ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... the same excess of admiration with which we regard the ancients. We might push the prediction further. In still later ages the interval of time which divides us from the Greeks and Romans will appear so relatively small to posterity that they will classify us and the ancients as virtually contemporary; just in the same way as we group together the Greeks and Romans, though the Romans in their own day were moderns in relation to the Greeks. In ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... counacouchi snakes, which convey death in a very short space of time, are essentially necessary in the composition of his poison; and being once impressed with this idea, he will add them every time he makes the poison and transmit the absolute use of them to his posterity. The question to be answered seems not to be if it is natural for the Indians to mix these ingredients, but if they are essential to make ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... dignity and patriotism. We can see the men who spoke them standing before the representatives of the government whose oppression had driven them to revolt, when the solemn farce of trying them for a crime which posterity will account a virtue had terminated, and when the verdict of "guilty" had gladdened the hearts of their accusers. The circumstances under which they spoke might well cause a bold man to falter. They were about parting for ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... thousand streams—of a stronger outline and coarser stamp, as is fitted to and well-becoming the pioneer of the grandest portion of the continent, and of one who is putting forth the thew and sinew of a giant, to benefit posterity; his only present recompense the possession of a rude independence, and the consciousness of increasing wealth, to add to which his energies are unceasingly devoted; his relaxation, meantime, an occasional frolic or debauch, which he grapples with, as his father did with fortune and the forest, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... work they were doing, and among the men of the time there were few who foresaw the immortal fame which these essays were to earn. It is said of one of the senators in the first Congress that he made the memorandum, "Get the 'Federalist,' if I can, without buying it. It isn't worth it." But for all posterity the "Federalist" must remain the most authoritative commentary upon the Constitution that can be found; for it is the joint work of the principal author of that Constitution and of its ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... laws of the ancient Romans, of which they are an abundant repository, but we may read them from a much higher motive. We may read them from a motive which the great author had doubtless in his view, when by publishing them he left to the world and to the latest posterity a monument by which it might be seen what course a great public accuser in a great public cause ought to pursue, and, as connected with it, what course judges ought to pursue in deciding upon such a cause. In these orations you will find almost every instance of rapacity and peculation which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... will do most to promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty to yourselves and your posterity, and establish on this continent a genuine republic that shall know no class, caste, race, or sex—where all the people are citizens, and all citizens are ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... hundred thousand protestants were cut to pieces in different parts of the kingdom! Two or three governors only refused to obey the king's orders. One of these, named Montmorrin, governor of Auvergne, wrote the king the following letter, which deserves to be transmitted to the latest posterity. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... failure. Flaws! He was not a big painter. He was merely a self-centered, impecunious, improvident Irishman, indifferently skillful, whose vanity and self-indulgence had driven his son off into a vague green world, God alone knew where. He was a big painter! Posterity would fling that back in ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... their betters, the holiday spectacle of mimic strife, and, above all, the powerful and corporate association they formed amongst themselves, tended to make them as wild, as jovial, and as dissolute a set of young fellows as their posterity are now sober, careful, and discreet. And as Nicholas Alwyn, with a slight inclination of his head, passed by, two or three loud, swaggering, bold-looking groups of apprentices—their shaggy hair streaming over their shoulders, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... alike the Hebrew and Caledonian vestiges in his name, and signed himself E. M. Crotchet, which by degrees induced the majority of his neighbours to think that his name was Edward Matthew. The more effectually to sink the Mac, he christened his villa "Crotchet Castle," and determined to hand down to posterity the honours of Crotchet of Crotchet. He found it essential to his dignity to furnish himself with a coat of arms, which, after the proper ceremonies (payment being the principal), he obtained, videlicet: Crest, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... nation; Field and Riley have made us laugh and cry in sympathy; Aldrich, Sill, Van Dyke, Burroughs, and Thoreau have shared with us their hoard of beauty. Among the present generation may there appear many men and women whose devotion to the delicate flower shall be repaid by the gratitude of posterity! ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... that she had half so many until I came to a trial. There are some (sic) in your collection of which she hath not a part, and I should by this time had a great number written for your amusement, thinking them all of great antiquity and lost to posterity, had I not luckily lighted upon a collection of songs in two volumes, published by I know not who, in which I recognised about half-a-score of my mother's best songs, almost word for word. No doubt I was piqued, but it saved me much trouble, paper, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... left the boats over-night in the custody of one whom we shall call Carnival. I did not properly catch his name, and perhaps that was not unfortunate for him, as I am not in a position to hand him down with honour to posterity. To this person's premises we strolled in the course of the day, and found quite a little deputation inspecting the canoes. There was a stout gentleman with a knowledge of the river, which he seemed eager to impart. There was a very elegant young ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wrote Sainte Aldegonde, "been willing, since the year sixty-six, to pursue a course of toleration, the memory of his reign would have been sacred to all posterity, with an immortal praise of sapience, benignity, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to render just judgment, and compel the court of appeals, which is none other than posterity, to confirm contemporaneous judgments, it is essential not to light up one side only of the figure we depict, but to walk around it, and wherever the sunlight does not reach, to hold a torch, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... privileges, the ecclesiastical assembly thought itself bound to plead the cause of that magistracy which it had so, often fought. "Our silence," said the remonstrances, "would be a crime, of which the nation and posterity would never absolve us. Your Majesty has just effected at the bed of justice of May 8, a great movement as regards things and persons. Such ought to be a consequence rather than a preliminary of the States-general; the will of a prince ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... development of the country such as no one man heretofore has contributed. His Studies and recommendations with regard to the arid lands of the West are of the greatest importance to that district and to the country at large and the nearer they can be carried out the better will it be for posterity. He perceived at once that the reservation of sites for storage reservoirs was of the first importance and this was one of the earliest steps he endeavoured to ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... white beard, You offer him, if this be so, a wrong Something unfilial: reason my son Should choose himself a wife; but as good reason The father,—all whose joy is nothing else But fair posterity,—should hold some counsel In such ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... prehistoric. Besides, at least we know what has happened, and what is happening, but we can't possibly know what is going to be, what the future holds for us; so what's the point of thinking only of that? Why should we live only for posterity, when, as the old joke says, posterity ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... having degenerated into the besom, and the truck taken the place of the chariot of state. The family of Nimrod may still exist, and retain their ancestral propensities in the craft of sportsmen and deer-stalkers, or in the lower grade of Jehus and jockeys. Who knows but the posterity of Solomon may be retailing old clothes, and the heirs of the Nebuchadnezzar dynasty still exist somewhere—perhaps among our graziers or cattle-dealers, our keepers of dairies or secretaries of agricultural ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... this view to each of us three children; urging, that as they themselves intended not to marry, we each of us might be so portioned, and so advantageously matched, as that our posterity, if not ourselves, might make a first figure in our country.—While my brother, as the only son, thought the two girls might be very well provided for by ten or fifteen thousand pounds a-piece: and that all the real estates in the family, to wit, my grandfather's, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... saber in just one supreme crisis on whose doubtful issue hung trembling the fate of the whole union, I would beg to live that day over again and to ride with Gregg and McIntosh and Custer; to share in the wild, fierce charge of the Michigan men; to have my name go down to posterity with those of Alger and Kidd, Town and Trowbridge, Briggs and gallant Ferry, whose dead hand gripped the saber hilt and the very grave. To have it said that I fought with the old Second division of the cavalry corps that day when it went and grappled and overwhelmed the foe in the full tide ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... second course of lectures without referring to the loss which the study of primitive religion has lately sustained by the death of one of my predecessors in this chair, one who was a familiar and an honoured figure in this place, Mr. Andrew Lang. Whatever may be the judgment of posterity on his theories—and all our theories on these subjects are as yet more or less tentative and provisional—there can be no question but that by the charm of his writings, the wide range of his knowledge, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... 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 left ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... 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; ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to hope, and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway, though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb with none to ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... substantially helped the credit of the school. The badge was only a rosette made of narrow ribbons, stitched in tiny loops into the form of a daisy, with a yellow disk, and white and pink outer rays. If meant very much, however, to the recipient, who knew that her name would be handed down to posterity in the school traditions, and every girl was immensely keen ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... example of the best Reformed Churches: and we shall endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the three Kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in Religion, Confession of Faith, Form of Church-Government, Directory for Worship and Catechising, that we and our posterity after us may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... descendants of all who had borne arms in their country's struggle for liberty, should be always entitled to all the rights and privileges to which an American citizen could be eligible. This at once, enfranchised the native citizen, and the posterity of all those at the time, who may have been so fortunate as to have been born on the American continent. The question was at once settled, as regards American citizenship. And if we establish our right of equal claims to citizenship ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... was only a "lad" aboard the MAY-FLOWER, but he left a considerable posterity. Nothing is surely known of him, except that ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... crudity and apparently unstudied frankness as the work of Mark Twain. It is for American criticism to posit this more comprehensive aesthetic, and to demonstrate that the work of Mark Twain is the work of a great artist. It would be absurd to maintain that Mark Twain's appeal to posterity depends upon the dicta of literary criticism. It would be absurd to deny that upon America rests the task of demonstrating, to a world willing enough to be convinced, that Mark Twain is one of the supreme and imperishable glories of ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Aztecan priests were adepts in magic," observed the professor, "and it's natural that some of their learning should have descended to their posterity. We have been clever in giving names to such phenomena, but we know perhaps even less about their esoteric meaning than the Aztecans did. I should judge that Miriam would be what is called a good 'subject.' Kamaiakan discovered that fact; and as for what followed, we can only infer it from the results. ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... some declension from the early brilliancy of that Chevreuil who came over with the Conqueror. A very imposing personage was this Sir Anthony, standing with one arm akimbo, and one fine leg and foot advanced, evidently with a view to the gratification of his contemporaries and posterity. You might have taken off his splendid peruke, and his scarlet cloak, which was thrown backward from his shoulders, without annihilating the dignity of his appearance. And he had known how to choose a wife, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... they are not he. Shakspeare built not his throne on the same site as Homer—nor Scott on that whence Shakspeare looked down upon the universe. The gap which Scott leaves in the world is the token of the space he filled in the homage of his times. A hundred ages hence our posterity will still see that wide interval untenanted—a vast and mighty era in the intellectual world, which will prove how spacious were "the city and the temple, whose summit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... And, if they of themselves sufficient were Their praises to posterity to show, Nor borrowed authors' aid, whose bosoms are With envy and with hate corroded so, That oft they hide the good they might declare, And tell in every place what ill they know, To such a pitch would mount the female name, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... point of the prophecy is the promise to David's 'seed.' In form it attaches itself very significantly to David's intention to build a house for Jehovah. That would invert the true order, for Jehovah was about to build a house, that is, a permanent posterity, for David. God must first give before man can requite. All our relations to Him begin with His free mercy to us. And our building for Him should ever be the result of His building for us, and will, in some humble way, resemble the divine beneficence by which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... volumes, of some 400 pages each, full of closely printed hymns. One must wish that Charles Wesley at least (who showed in a few instances how well he could do) had, instead of reeling off all this stuff, concentrated his efforts to produce only what should be worthy of his talents and useful to posterity. ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... lest Adam should have an argument wherewith he might excuse himself against his Lord. When therefore, he fell into error and calamity and when disgrace waxed sore upon him and reproach, this passed to his posterity after him; wherefore Allah sent Prophets and Apostles and gave to them Books and they taught us the divine commandments and expounded to us what was therein of admonitions and precepts and made clear to us ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... a freezing barn of a church, and Basil Grelott banished to perish amid the forest in his renewed quest for freedom.... After reading the manuscript, Janet sat typewriting into the night, taking it home with her and placing it besides her bed, lest it be lost to posterity. By five the next evening ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... magnanimity and patience. To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as "short-tempered." The popular adage said: "To bear what you think you cannot bear is really to bear." The great Iyeyasu left to posterity a few maxims, among which are the following:—"The life of man is like going a long distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not. * * * * Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own short-comings. * * * Forbearance is the basis of length of days." He proved in his life what he ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... connection with menstruation, pregnancy and child bearing a long list of diseases peculiar to woman have arisen, most of which through proper food and exercise could be avoided. In matters so vital to posterity false modesty and ignorance can no longer ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... and I am strengthened in my suspicion by not finding any such name as "Simnel" in any index of ancient names. Could any of your correspondents throw light on this question, or tell whether Lambert left any posterity? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... to be used in religious ceremonies and many of the symbolisms, meanings, and customs survive to the present time. Some of the finest art of past centuries is found in the old candlesticks. Many of these antiques, which ofttimes were gifts to the church, have been preserved to posterity by the church. The influence of these lighting accessories is often noted in modern lighting-fixtures, but unfortunately early art often suffers from adaptation to the requirements of modern light-sources, ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... quotes the following by Edmund Smith, and written some time after 1708:—'It will sound oddly to posterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most literary property in 1710, whether by wise, most learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick should be better ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... literature created in a given period of time differs from epoch to epoch, but it does not differ much. And we may be perfectly sure that our own age will make a favourable impression upon that excellent judge, posterity. Therefore, beware of disparaging the present in your own mind. While temporarily ignoring it, dwell upon the idea that its chaff contains about as much wheat as any similar quantity of ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... to see the day, I trust," went on the artist, "when no man shall build his house for posterity. Why should he? He might just as reasonably order a durable suit of clothes,—leather, or guttapercha, or whatever else lasts longest,—so that his great-grandchildren should have the benefit of them, and cut precisely ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Dumon, "will be the fate of your original poetry? It will live, no doubt, like the dialect in which it is written; but is this, the Gascon patois, likely to live? Will it be spoken by our posterity as long as it has been spoken by our ancestors? I hope not; at least I wish it may be less spoken. Yet I love its artless and picturesque expressions, its lively recollections of customs and manners which have long ceased to exist, like those old ruins which still embellish our landscape. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... which a thing is told Some truth abuse, while others fiction hold; In stories we invention may admit; But diff'rent 'tis with what historick writ; Posterity demands that truth should then Inspire relation, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... imbecility of this man, at such a time as that we now write on, which invests his character with a fearful interest in the eye of posterity. In himself the impersonation of the meanest vices inherent in the vicious civilisation of his period, to his feebleness was accorded the terrible responsibility of liberating the long-prisoned storm whose elements we have attempted to ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... father's peril Lausus view'd with grief; He sigh'd, he wept, he ran to his relief. And here, heroic youth, 't is here I must To thy immortal memory be just, And sing an act so noble and so new, Posterity will scarce believe 't is true. Pain'd with his wound, and useless for the fight, The father sought to save himself by flight: Incumber'd, slow he dragg'd the spear along, Which pierc'd his thigh, and in his buckler hung. ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... to be present at, and have some concern in, the treaty for the restoring the posterity of the truly noble Palsgrave, King of Bohemia. King James of England had indeed too much neglected the whole family; and I may say with authority enough, from my own knowledge of affairs, had nothing been done for them but what was from England, that family had remained desolate ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... principle by every argument of justice and expediency, for it is both just and expedient. What right have the millionnaires to say how the world shall be managed after they have left it? What right to say that when they have established a dangerous inequality, posterity shall be compelled to make it perpetual. The robber barons established inequality by the sword, and by the same power made it perpetual. The posterity of kings and barons, however worthless, corrupt, criminal, or imbecile, continue to occupy the saddle ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... is in the dark; but come what may, some of them are sure to have arrived at conclusions diametrically opposed to our own upon every subject connected with art, science, philosophy, and religion; it is plain, therefore, that if posterity is to be pleased, it can only be at the cost of repelling some present readers. Unwilling as I am to do this, I still hold it the lesser of two evils; I will be as brief, however, as the interests of the opinions I ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... second, in 1781. Dr. Rees said that Wilkes won his way to Johnson's heart not, as Boswell reports, by his wit, but by the grossest flattery; and he added that Johnson always courted Boswell more than any one else, that he might be exhibited to posterity in a favorable light. A mere list of the names of the people he saw during this short stay in England will show how full of interest this part of his diary is. Campbell, Gifford, West, Sir Humphry Davy he saw most frequently, but no one so often as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... to speak of that unhappy battle of Newbury, I would enlarge upon the memory of our dear friend that perished there: to which I concieve myself obliged, not more by the rights of friendship than of history, which ought to transmit the virtue of excellent persons to posterity: and therefore I am careful to do justice to every man that hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever, as you will find by what I have said of Mr. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... heroic exercises, the Champion passed his time, until the faithful De Fistycuff reminded him that he was sadly wasting it, if he wished to gain a name to be handed down to posterity. "You are right, my faithful monitor," he answered, "I'll bid farewell to the ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... must determine which of the two courses was the more successful in training, moulding, enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which produced better public men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that University which did nothing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with every science under the sun. And, paradox as this may seem, still ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... posterity also of his servants shall inherit it: and they that love his Name shall ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... queen could not forget the prophecy of the weird sisters, that, though Macbeth should be king, yet not his children, but the children of Banquo, should be kings after him. The thought of this, and that they had defiled their hands with blood, and done so great crimes, only to place the posterity of Banquo upon the throne, so rankled within them, that they determined to put to death both Banquo and his son, to make void the predictions of the weird sisters, which in their own case had been ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Stark, which hangs in the parlour at the right of the square entrance-hall, was painted by Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the discoverer of the electric telegraph, a man who wished to come down to posterity as an artist, but is now remembered by us only as ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... way. But many imagine that there is some principle within the living organism which impels it onward to a higher level of organisation. That is entirely an error. There is no "law of progress." If an animal is fitted to secure its livelihood and breed posterity in certain surroundings, it may remain unchanged indefinitely if these surroundings do not materially change. So the duckmole of Australia and the tuatara of New Zealand have retained primitive features for millions of years; so the aboriginal Australian and the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... The Venetians were successful in a naval battle at Saboro, against Otho, the son of Frederick Barbarossa. In return, the Pope presented the Doge Liani with a ring, with which he told him to wed the Adriatic, that posterity might know that the sea was subject to Venice, "as a ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... calendars of former reigns record a variety of places and perquisites, which, did they still exist, would be unpalatable to modern courtiers, though compelled to earn their daily cakes, however dirty. Just as the last golden pippin of the house of Crenie was preserved in wax for the edification of posterity, a watchman has been deposited, with his staff and lantern, in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, or the Museum of the Zoological, or United Service Club, or some other of your grand national collections, as a specimen of the extinct Dogberry or Charley of the eighteenth century; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... sense would. The advantage to be gained by quitting the heresy would make it shameful to abandon it; and men who had once left the Church would continue in such a state of alienation from a point of honour, and transmit that spirit to their latest posterity. This is just the effect your disqualifying laws have produced. They have fed Dr. Rees, and Dr. Kippis; crowded the congregations of the Old Jewry to suffocation: and enabled every sublapsarian, and superlapsarian, and semi- pelagian clergyman, to build himself a neat brick chapel, and live ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... Mr. Caxton, more quietly, "so, if later wars yet perplex us as to the good that the All-wise One draws from their evils, our posterity may read their uses as clearly as we now read the finger of Providence resting on the barrows of Marathon, or guiding Peter the Hermit to the battlefields of Palestine. Nor, while we admit the evil to the passing generation, can we deny that many of the virtues ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Chancery,[623]—which some persons plead In an appeal to the unborn, whom they, In the faith of their procreative creed, Baptize Posterity, or future clay,— To me seems but a dubious kind of reed To lean on for support in any way; Since odds are that Posterity will know No more of them, than they of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... of all others earned and deserved his place in the pictorial satires of the nineteenth century was emphatically Brougham. The verdict of posterity on this restless but unquestionably brilliant man of genius must of necessity be a somewhat disappointing one; he aimed at being nothing less than an Admirable Crichton, and such a character in the nineteenth century, when every public man must be more or less talented, more or less brilliant, would ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... must be sacredly and promptly kept. Our noble volunteers must be fed, and clothed, and cared for, and to this end the state must have the requisite means. And to obtain the needed supply without oppressive taxation on the one hand, or placing a load on posterity too heavy to be borne on the other hand, is a question of difficult solution; and yet we shall see that there is in the present administration the ability and the will to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ascesis. The tone and temper advocated by him is one eminently sane, peaceful, quiet, friendly and gay. He does not free us from a dark responsibility to God to plunge us under the yoke of a darker responsibility to posterity. He would free us from every kind of responsibility. He would reduce our life to a beautiful unrestricted "Abbey of Thelema," over the gates of which the great Pantagruelian motto "Fay ce que vouldray" would be written ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... too many occasions on which a law, immutable in all ages, and common to all nations, requires that private interests should be sacrificed to a great general interest, and that even humanity should he forgotten. It is for posterity to judge whether this terrible situation was that in which Bonaparte was placed. For my own part, I have a perfect conviction that be could not do otherwise than yield to the dire necessity of the case. It was the advice of the council, whose opinion was unanimous in ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne |
