"Posterity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but in the closer onset of the seventh day, the Orientals were oppressed by the strength and stature of the Germans, who, with stout hearts and iron hands, [31] asserted the civil and religious freedom of their posterity. The epithet of Martel. the Hammer, which has been added to the name of Charles, is expressive of his weighty and irresistible strokes: the valor of Eudes was excited by resentment and emulation; and their companions, in the eye of history, are the true Peers and Paladins ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... reign, the pleasures of the court never cost the people a blush or a sigh. They gradually reformed many of the abuses of the times of Constantius; judiciously adopted and improved the designs of Julian and his successor; and displayed a style and spirit of legislation which might inspire posterity with the most favorable opinion of their character and government. It is not from the master of Innocence, that we should expect the tender regard for the welfare of his subjects, which prompted Valentinian to condemn the exposition of new-born infants; [60] and to establish fourteen ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... misinterpretation. Possibly under the blinding delusion of secret promises, unknown, nay, inaccessible, to those outside (all contemporaries being as ridiculously impotent to penetrate within the curtain as all posterity), the wife of Lamia, once so pure, may have been over-persuaded to make such public manifestations of affection for Domitian as had hitherto, upon one motive or another, been loftily withheld. Things, that to a lover carry along with them irreversible ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... that the original English poems will be ultimately found to constitute Toru's chief legacy to posterity. These ballads form the last and most matured of her writings, and were left so far fragmentary at her death that the fourth and fifth in her projected series of nine were not to be discovered in any form among her papers. It is probable ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... two Townshends, Mansfield, Halifax, and Chesterfield,—were conspicuous figures in the politics of the time. One man towered above them all. Pitt had many enemies and many critics. They called him ambitious, audacious, arrogant, theatrical, pompous, domineering; but what he has left for posterity is a loftiness of soul, undaunted courage, fiery and passionate eloquence, proud incorruptibility, domestic virtues rare in his day, unbounded faith in the cause for which he stood, and abilities which without wealth or strong connections were destined ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... carrying to the hospital,—and are all the murders, and massacres, and fields of wounded, and the madness, the conflagrations, the famines, the miseries of families, and the rickety frames and melancholy bloods of posterity, only fit to have an embroidered handkerchief thrown over them? Must "ladies and gentlemen" be called off, that they may not "look that way," the "sight is so shocking"? Does it become us to let others endure, what we cannot ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... Our fellows judge us coldly; We mostly dwell in fog, and dance in fetters; But sweeter far to face oblivion boldly, Than front posterity through a Life and Letters. That Memory's the Mother of the Muses, We're told. Alas! it must have been the Furies! Mnemosyne her privilege abuses,— Nothing from her distorting glass secure is. Life ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... counseled her, when she once, in a doubtful hour, had summoned him to her aid. Albert and Matilda reached a good old age; their children throve, and carefully preserved, like their parents, the gifts received from the subterranean folk, who continued their favour to them and to all their posterity." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... husbands' tyranny, not even knowing how to read in many cases, occupied with their household duties, in which they were assisted by rough and uncouth slaves, with no other mission in life than to give birth to a numerous posterity.... This life ruined them, and their beauty quickly faded away; no wonder, then, that they summoned art to the aid of nature. The custom was so common and the art so perfect that even a painter like Taddeo Gaddi acknowledged that ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... an impression must necessarily produce, be diligent and faithful, to your utmost ability, in whatsoever you undertake. You need not evince the fecundity of a German[469] author; but only exert your best endeavours, and leave the issue to a future generation. Posterity will weigh, in even scales, your merits and demerits, when all present animosities and personal prejudices shall have subsided; and when the utility of our labours, whether in promoting wisdom or virtue, shall be unreservedly acknowledged. You ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... school, he had his first glimpse of the great world that up to then he had only dimly suspected. Dramatic enough in itself, isn't it?—if you can visualize the little dark chap. A common enough drama, too, the Lord knows. We people on top are bequeathing misery to our posterity when we let the Mortons of the world hate the rich. And head and shoulders above the other boys of his age at the school was Bewsher; not that materially, of course, there weren't others more important; Bewsher's family was old and rich as such families go, but he was very much a younger ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... It is only by a rare combination of gifts that one who speaks with so much readiness, force, and brilliance as to charm his listeners is also able to deliver such valuable thoughts in such choice words that posterity will read them as literature. Some few of the ancient orators did this; but we seldom know how far those of their speeches which have been preserved are the speeches which they actually delivered. Among moderns, ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... the large number of men who took an active part in the proceedings. And as we have now an opportunity to express our gratitude by handing their names down to posterity, and thus make them immortal, we here record Joseph Barker, Marius Robinson, Rev. D. L. Webster, Jacob Heaton, Dr. K. G. Thomas, L. A. Hine, Dr. A. Brooke, Rev. Mr. Howels, Rev. Geo. Schlosser, Mr. Pease, and Samuel Brooke. The reports of this Convention are ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... favourable circumstances. But unfortunately this is impossible. Schirach believed that queens were impregnated of themselves, consequently he thought that after being artificially produced, they would lay and give birth to a numerous posterity. Now, this is an error; the females, to become fertile, require the concourse of the males, and if not impregnated within a few days of their origin, their laying, as I have observed, is completely deranged. Thus, if a swarm were artificially ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... necessary to explain that in the words "successors of Tennyson" I make no reference to an actual or a prospective Poet Laureate. The position primarily held by Tennyson in his lifetime, and the only position in which posterity will regard him, is the position of the poet. That he was the laureate also is no doubt a matter of some biographical interest, but it is of little further significance. It will be doing no injustice to the large quantity of agreeable verse-writing which has been executed by Mr. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... London, 1770, p. 27 n.)] His troubles as Sovereign Duke, his flights to Dantzig, oustings, returns, law-pleadings and foolish confusions, lasted all his life, thirty years to come; and were bequeathed as a sorrowful legacy to Posterity and the neighboring Countries. Voltaire says, the Czar wished to buy his Duchy from him. [Ubi supra, xxxi. 414.] And truly, for this wretched Duke, it would have been good to sell it at any price: ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... of the full extent of his losses, which excited the indignation of his own troops, who said, "There is no use in our sacrificing our lives in secret; if our toils are concealed from she emperor neither we nor our posterity will be rewarded." This unlucky commander was banished to Central Asia, and after his supersession Hengan had the satisfaction of bringing the war to a satisfactory end within ten days. Some of the leaders were executed, the others swore to keep ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... of a portrait; as a rule, one's bitterest friends can find nothing more to ask than the faithful unlikeness that goes down to posterity as oneself. I hate posterity—it's so fond of having the last word. Of course, as regards portraits, ...
— Reginald • Saki
... monument. "Simon," said the brave and free-spoken Scotsman, "how the devil came you to put up such boasting romantic stuff?" "The monument and inscription," replied Lovat, "are chiefly for the Frasers, who must believe whatever I require, their chief, of them, and then posterity will think it as true as the Gospel." Yet he did not scruple, when it suited his purpose, to designate his clansmen, the lairds around him, as "the little pitiful barons of the Aird;"—this was, however, when writing ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... genuine in composition, though it cannot be admired, may be borne. But for this we should be compelled to class one of the best of English books among the very worst of English writings. Mr. Grote must remember that no man who writes for posterity can afford to neglect the art of composition. The trimmer bark, though less richly laden, will float further down the stream of time, and when so many authors of real ability and learning are competing for every ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... remained undisturbed. France might magnanimously decline a share in the spoil, because by the ruin of Austria it doubly profited, and was most powerful if it did not become more powerful. Finally, upon condition of ridding Europe of their presence, the posterity of Hapsburg were to be allowed the liberty of augmenting her territories in all the other known or yet undiscovered portions of the globe. But the dagger of Ravaillac delivered Austria from her danger, to postpone for some centuries longer the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Our first parents were made by God not only as particular individuals, but also as principles of the whole human nature to be transmitted by them to their posterity, together with the Divine favor preserving them from death. Hence through their sin the entire human nature, being deprived of that favor in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread, and shall say, 'Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests' office' (Vulgate reads: "Ad unam partem sacerdotalem."), 'that I may eat a piece of bread.'" Here Holy Scripture clearly shows that the posterity of Eli, when removed from the office of the priesthood, will seek to be admitted to one sacerdotal part, to a piece of bread. So our laymen also ought, therefore, to be content with one sacerdotal part, the one form. For both the Roman pontiffs and cardinals ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... to whom he had confided all his secrets and longings, was married to M. Surville in May, 1830, and moved to Bayeux. He was thus deprived of her congenial companionship. The separation is fortunate for posterity, however, since the letters he wrote to her reveal much of the family life, both pleasant and otherwise, together with a great deal concerning his own desires and struggles. Thus early in life, he realized that his was a very "original" family, and regretted not being able to put ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... the Count, kindling at the words of his friend, "it is old France transplanted, transfigured, and glorified,—where her language, religion, and laws shall be handed down to her posterity, the glory of North America as the mother-land is ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... taste is too common; but time and posterity Will right these great men, and this age's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... brighter faith and keener insight than any other of the early visitors to the coast, says of the country: "It has hitherto been the fate of these regions to remain unnoticed; but posterity will do them justice; towns and cities will flourish where all is now desert; the waters over which scarcely a solitary boat is yet seen to glide will reflect the flags of all nations; and a happy, prosperous people receiving ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... a similar sort, sometimes cause the critics to proclaim beautiful what is ugly, and ugly what is beautiful. Were they to eliminate such disturbing elements, they would feel the work of art as it really is, and would not leave to posterity, that more diligent and more dispassionate judge, to award the palm, or to do that justice, which ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... rung With halleluiahs: Thus was sabbath kept. And thy request think now fulfilled, that asked How first this world and face of things began, And what before thy memory was done From the beginning; that posterity, Informed by thee, might know: If else thou seekest Aught, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... relation of the most ordinary incidents, exactness of dates, or precision of events, appears unattainable. Fiction is ever elbowing fact, so that it might be supposed contemporaries had with one accord been conspiring to disguise the truth from posterity. The uncertainty is deepened tenfold when motives have to be measured and appraised. Ralegh was the best hated personage in the kingdom. On a conscientious biographer is laid the burden of allowing just enough, and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... he endeavors to retain his book, desirous of getting abroad; tells it what trouble it is to undergo, and imparts some things to be said of him to posterity. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Austrian archdukes, were stationed the McShanes, on the Groyne; the Daniells at Antwerp; the posterity of the earls themselves with that of their former retinue. All held rank in the Austrian army, and even in times of peace were occupied in thinking of possible entanglements whereby they might serve their country, while they made the Irish name honored and respected all over that rich ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of the life of one, whom posterity will declare not to have lived in vain, I have only to add, that all the facts I have stated are either known to myself, or communicated by his family or others, for whose truth I have no hesitation to make myself responsible; and I conclude ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... illustrious founder of our family; but happy was it for posterity that the yellow-topped boots did not die along with him; these, with the red waistcoat, the leather breeches, and plated spurs, remained to raise the fortunes of our house to a higher station. The waistcoat has been long since numbered with the waistcoats before the flood; the buckskins, made of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... almost needless to say that the son of the non-juror and his immediate posterity were staunch Jacobites, one and all. I am not aware that they ever risked or suffered anything for the cause; but they were not therefore the less vehement. Many were the signs and tokens of that dead-and-gone political faith which these loyal Arbuthnots left behind them. In the bed-rooms ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... did not know what was going to happen, or why he was doing this, for such is commonly the case during the progress of great events. The actors do not recognise the importance of the part they are playing. The age does not know what it is doing; posterity alone can appreciate it. But after a while, as the fox drove the hare out of the hedges, and met and faced her, and bewildered the poor creature, he observed that her zig-zag course, entirely unpremeditated, was leading them closer ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... constitution? It is an assertion, the malignity of which is only equalled by its falsehood. We have a free and glorious constitution. It has descended to us from our brave and free ancestors, and I trust that we, too, shall have virtue and magnanimity enough to transmit it unimpaired to our posterity. We have laws, too, equal in their administration. We have a constitution where no lowness of birth—no meanness of origin—operate as an obstacle to preferment; in which the chief situations are open to competition, and for which the only qualifications are integrity and information. ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... forgotten the manner of his death, though probably no young writer with an eye on posterity ever had a better send-off. We really thought at the time that Tommy had found ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... to stand on the same shelf with the "Magnalia" of his book-suffocated son. Cunningham's comparatively recent edition, we should think, might satisfy for a long time to come the demand for Drummond, whose chief value to posterity is as the Boswell of Ben Jonson. Sir Thomas Overbury's "Characters" are interesting illustrations of contemporary manners, and a mine of footnotes to the works of better men,—but, with the exception of "The Fair and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... the image of St. Nicholas for a figurehead on their vessel. They named the first church they built for the much-loved St. Nicholas and made him patron saint of the new city on Manhattan Island. Thanks, many many thanks, to these sturdy old Dutchmen with unpronounceable names who preserved to posterity so many delightful customs of Christmas observance. What should we have done without them? They were quite a worthy people notwithstanding they believed in enjoying life and meeting together for gossip and merrymaking. Christmas was a joyful season with them. The churches and ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... 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
... true, and the men and women who at the time enjoyed the glory of opposing us ought to be known to posterity even if it is to their children's sorrow; just as those who suffered the torments of ridicule and hatred then, now enjoy the rewards, and their children and grandchildren glory in their ancestors. Robert Dale Owen's daughter, in writing up the Indiana Constitutional Convention and her father's opponents, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... enemy; and the poverty of the land has introduced a maxim of jurisprudence, which they believe and practise to the present hour. They pretend, that, in the division of the earth, the rich and fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the human family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might recover, by fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly deprived. According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are equally addicted to theft and merchandise; the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Gaubius and the late illustrious Boerhaave and other dead Dutchmen, of whom you know as much, most of you, as you do of Noah's apothecary and the family physician of Methuselah, whose prescriptions seem to have been lost to posterity. Dr. Lloyd came back to Boston full of the teachings of Cheselden and Sharpe, William Hunter, Smellie, and Warner; Dr. James Jackson loved to tell of Mr. Cline and to talk of Mr. John Hunter; Dr. Reynolds would give you his recollections of Sir Astley Cooper ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pictorial effect, but from the plain narrative of his simple and admiring wife. Burns speaks of Tam o' Shanter as his first attempt at a tale in verse—unfortunately it was also his last. He himself regarded it as his master-piece of all his poems, and posterity has not, I believe, reversed ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... historian of the age, writes in the spirit which breathes in the historical books of the Bible, where the free actions of man are represented as inseparably connected with the agency of God. If we may judge of the future by the past, as the scroll of time unrolls, we, or our posterity, and some think glorified spirits in a yet higher degree, shall see more and more plainly the hand of God operating, till every knee shall bow. Judgments, now a great deep, shall become as the light that goeth forth. The tides of ambition and avarice will all be seen to roll in subserviency ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... who affirms he never saw them till on board the privateer, and Francisco and Aug'ne both woud prove that they knew him some months before and Converst with him, is proof Enough they are Slaves and hope that by the old Law of Nations, where it Says that all prisoners of War, nay Even their posterity are Slaves, that by that Law Pedro Sancho and And'w Estavie will be decreed as Such for the Use of the Captures. So shall Rest it with ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... into obligations that not one man in fifty is free to disregard. While it is called your day—before you are compassed behind and before with a commonplace that locks up so many lives like a numbing fate—signalize your record by some bit of heroism. If you would have posterity call you wise, seize your chance, while you have it, to be God's fool. Find the faith that can help you to play a man's part in the world; find in your faith the power which can grasp you by your weakness and sin, and lift you into strength and ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... the sum of what I should have said in that case. These papers shall lie by me till time and accidents produce some occasion of communicating them to you. The true occasion of doing it with advantage to the party will probably be lost; but they will remain a monument of my justification to posterity. At worst, if even this fails me, I am sure of one satisfaction in writing them: the satisfaction of unburdening my mind to a friend, and of stating before an equitable judge the account, as I apprehend it to stand, between the Tories and myself—"Quantum humano ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... he may suffer imprisonment, he may be muzzled for thinking his thoughts, he may die and with him the truth to which he gave but silent birth. But the world comes, by its slower progress, to traverse the path in which he wished to lead it; and if so be that his thought was recorded, posterity revives it in regretful ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... and unprotected offspring, nor love of self can awaken a single spark of courage or patriotism in their bosoms, can scare away that demon sloth from among them, or induce them to make a solitary exertion to save themselves and posterity from a foreign yoke; why then, they are surely unworthy to be called a people; they deserve to be deprived of their effects, children, and personal liberty, to have their habitual sloth and listlessness converted into labour and usefulness, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... they that are born here talk good English and affect our Language, Habits and Customs.... Their work or Chimerical (hard Slavery) is not very laborious; their greatest Hardship consisting in that they and their Posterity are not at their own Liberty or Disposal, but are the Property of their Owners; and when they are free they know not how to provide so well for themselves generally; neither did they live so plentifully nor (many of them) so easily in their own Country where they are made ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... somehow hardly ever in them, Sir Hugo not being contented without him. The chatty baronet would have liked a young companion even if there had been no peculiar reasons for attachment between them: one with a fine harmonious unspoiled face fitted to keep up a cheerful view of posterity and inheritance generally, notwithstanding particular disappointments; and his affection for Deronda was not diminished by the deep-lying though not obtrusive difference in their notions and tastes. Perhaps it was all the stronger; acting as the same sort of difference does ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the champions of human liberty," said Beauchamp, warmly, "and will be blessed by posterity, if not by the men ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... Amsterdam. It 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 ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... shivered as the conviction came to him that he must have been composing for posterity, since he did not desire present publicity. No doubt he had tried to trick himself into the belief that he had toiled for himself alone, paid the tribute of ardent work to his own soul. Now he asked himself, with bitter scepticism: "Does ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... and simple in the Grecian games as they were distinguishing and honourable. A garland of palm, or laurel, or parsley, or pine leaves, served to adorn the brow of the fortunate victor, whilst his name stood a chance of being transmitted to posterity in the strains of some lofty Pindar. The rewards of modern days are indeed more substantial and solid, being paid in weighty gold or its equivalent, no matter whether obtained by the ruin of others, while the fleet coursers and their exulting proprietors stand conspicuous in the list of the Racing ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... antiquaries have undertaken to solve this curious problem of Nature in a very off-hand manner, by asserting that the rocks were heaped up as they now appear, by the Druids, with the intention of astonishing their contemporaries and all posterity by a striking exhibition of their architectural skill. (If any of these antiquarian gentlemen be still living, I would not recommend them to attempt a practical illustration of their theory by building miniature Cheese-Wrings out of the contents of ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... possession to the glory of independence. The race felt its importance as did no one else at that time. By hundreds and thousands they crowded the places appointed, to accept the honor offered to their posterity, and thereby unwittingly conferred undying honor upon themselves. Few indeed were the unworthy ones who evaded the sacred responsibility thus laid upon them, and left their offspring to remain under the badge of shame. When carefully looked at it was ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... ecclesiastical festivals.[2196] On each decadi, through solemn and appropriate pomp, we impress on the popular mind one of the highest truths of our creed; we glorify, in the order of their dates, Nature, Truth, Justice, Liberty, Equality, the People, Adversity, Humanity, the Republic, Posterity, Glory, Patriotism, Heroism, and other virtues. Besides this, we honor the important days of the Revolution, the taking of the Bastille, the fall of the Throne, the punishment of the tyrant, the expulsion of the Girondins. We, too, have our anniversaries, our relics, the relics ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... those touches, made afterwards familiar to the readers of Dickens by innumerable similar fancies, which added affection to their admiration for the writer, and enabled them to anticipate the feeling with which posterity would regard him as indeed the worthy companion of the Goldsmiths and Fieldings. There was a piece of writing, too, within not many pages of it, of which Leigh Hunt exclaimed on reading it that it surpassed the best things of the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... been found among the ruins of old Rome are already very numerous, there is no question but posterity will have the pleasure of seeing many noble pieces of sculpture which are still undiscovered; for, doubtless, there are greater treasures of this nature under ground, than what are yet brought to light.[5] They have often dug into lands that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... therefore shrewdly calculated to provoke opposition and to avoid any leaven of Whiggism in the "institution and patronage" of the Academy. Swift wanted the contemporary prestige, as well as the favorable verdict of posterity, to be unmistakably placed. Nevertheless there was no intention of excluding meritorious Whigs from the original membership—only, as is clear from Swift's attitude, from the "institution and patronage" of the Academy. In a list of Academicians drawn ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... constitution of that republic which once ruled the destinies of the known world, and the influence of whose literature and laws is still powerful in every civilized state, and will probably continue to be felt to the remotest posterity. These discoveries have, however, been hitherto useless to junior students in this country; the works of the German critics being unsuited to the purposes of schools, not only from their price, but also from the extensive learning requisite to follow them through their laborious disquisitions. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... man, by his fall, devoted his posterity to misfortune, it would seem as if I, the workman, had consigned the whole race of artisans to endless sorrows, and as if they were expiating my crime: for they alone, during these eighteen centuries, have not ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... surpasses himself. Had all else that he wrote been merely mediocre, this one short poem would have given him a claim on the grateful memory of posterity. The note it strikes is one that has never been heard before in Latin poetry and is never heard again. We have wavered before as to Statius' title to the name of true poet; this should turn the balance in his favour. Great he is not for a moment to be called; Lucan, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... a time will come when all venereal disease will have disappeared from the face of the earth. But, until that time comes, it would be for the benefit of the race and of posterity if people had to present a certificate of freedom from transmissible venereal disease as a prerequisite to a marriage license. Custom is often more efficient than law, and, if a premarital examination should become a universal custom (and there ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... popular indignation and "chucked": the rest, who have managed to get their caps, are feeling that even now two-thirds of the school will be saying that they are not worth a place in the third fifteen; while the captain, brooding apart, is becoming soured at the thought that Posterity will forget what little good he may have done, and remember only that it was in his year that the school got so many points taken off them by So-and-So. Conversation does not ripple and sparkle during these home-comings. The Wrykyn team made the journey ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... and that are most real. I know them well. And I wish I could make you understand that there is no happiness for us, that there should not and cannot be.... We must only work and work, and happiness is only for our distant posterity. [Pause] If not for me, then for ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... bodily strength, joined to dexterity, with a spirit and courage ever royal and magnanimous; and the fame of his name so increased, that not only in his lifetime was he held in esteem, but his reputation became even greater among posterity ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... that stuff; that is the stale argument of some of the smart young men who write for posterity. Rent is probably as high to-day as it was when wages were twice as high. The prices of flour, pork, and beef are regulated by the crop, not by the buyers' wages. If I were hammering at an anvil I ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... and asserted that it only needed to be seen with the mask off to excite the hatred of all mankind, uttered a very plausible moral sentiment, which wants nothing to recommend it to the admiration of posterity but a seasoning of practical truth. Even in the most luxurious days of old Rome, it may safely be questioned whether vice could ever afford to disguise itself to win recruits, except from the wealthier ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... more plainly than by mere reference, how much I geologically owe you. Those authors, however, who like you, educate people's minds as well as teach them special facts, can never, I should think, have full justice done them except by posterity, for the mind thus insensibly improved can hardly perceive its own upward ascent. I had intended putting in the present acknowledgment in the third part of my Geology, but its sale is so exceedingly small that I should not have had the satisfaction of thinking that as far as ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... inattention to all his requests, the consciousness that while he was winning victories in the field his enemies were successfully plotting at court, angered the proud and haughty spirit of Wallenstein almost to madness, and it may truly be said that he was goaded into rebellion. The verdict of posterity has certainly been favourable to him, and the dastardly murder which requited a lifetime of brilliant services has been held to more than counterbalance the faults ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... and trims up that to make himself more what he should be (or, in some perverse cases, what he should not be). But probably no man who is worthy of attention sits down to write a letter to a good friend with one eye on posterity and the public. In his intimate correspondence he is off guard. Hence, some day, when he has died, the world comes to know him by fleeting glimpses as he was,—which is almost as near, is it not, as we ever get to knowing one another?—knows him under his little private moods, in the spell ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... contemplate, without pleasure, the extent, the worth, or the splendour of his labours; the services, which he rendered by them to learning and religion, and the admiration and gratitude of the scholar, which he then enjoyed, and which would attend his memory to the latest posterity. He himself acknowledged that, in the ardour of his literary pursuits, he often forgot his calamities, and that the hours passed unheeded, if not in ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... Let 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 Regions of the Air For Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes In ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... match was likely to be historic, and one always feels tempted to hand one's name down to posterity. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... an object of dispute; and the regents could not expect that a controversy, which is not usually decided by reason and argument alone, would be peaceably settled by them, or even by the states of the kingdom, amidst so many powerful pretenders. The posterity of William, king of Scotland, the prince taken prisoner by Henry II., being all extinct by the death of Margaret of Norway, the right to the crown devolved on the issue of David, earl of Huntingdon brother to William, whose male line being also ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... the self-reliant and courageous, who dare to endure hardships and incur risks to secure for their country and posterity the benefits of new lands and broader opportunity. The trials of new and untried experiences and often of dire peril strengthen the character already strong, so that the pioneers in all lands and ages have been heroes whose exploits recounted ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... progress, and glory; a false conception portends disaster, shame, and death. A hundred and twenty years ago a West Jersey Quaker wrote: "This trade of importing slaves is dark gloominess hanging over the land; the consequences will be grievous to posterity." At the north the growth of slavery was arrested by natural causes; in the region nearest the tropics it throve rankly, and worked itself into the organism of the rising States. Virginia stood between ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... mill, my mulberry trees? O good God." He lays bare his spirit especially to Bourlamaque, a quiet, efficient, thoughtful man, like himself, and enjoins him to burn the letters—which he does not, happily for posterity. Scandal does not touch him but, like most Frenchmen, he is dependent on the society of women. He lived in a house on the ramparts of Quebec and visited constantly the salons of his neighbor in the Rue du Parloir, the beautiful and witty Madame de la Naudiere. In two or three ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... living miscellany of old songs. I never believed 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, and ink; for ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... stock must have been," said I, "it must doubtless have long since perished, even in its posterity. Their unsettled life is very unsuitable to ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... statesmen of America be not afraid of making too many game preserves! For the next year, one per day would be none too many! Remember, that on one hand we have the Army of Destruction, and on the other the expectant millions of Posterity. No executor or trustee ever erred in safeguarding an estate too carefully. Fifty years hence, if your successors and mine find that too much land has been set aside for the good of the people, they can mighty ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... say," I replied. "Nobody can tell, and I should think that will be one of the problems which will go down to posterity unsolved." ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... 'Minor Poems,' now omitted, whole lines, and even passages, to the end that being placed in a fairer light, and the trash shaken from them in which they were imbedded, they may have some chance of being seen by posterity. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... say nothing of those for domestic services and the uses of religious 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... by the seductions of Tahiti; in the case of the revolt in New South Wales, it is known that allegiance to constituted authority had no part in the character of Bligh's subjects. Therefore, notwithstanding that Bligh was the victim of two outbreaks against his rule, posterity, without the most indisputable evidence to the contrary, would have held him acquitted of the least responsibility for his misfortunes. In the case of the Bounty mutiny the evidence of Bligh's opponents that the captain of the Bounty was a tyrannical officer ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... "Louis, the son of Leonard, son of Buonarrota Simoni;" and he used the family surname of Simoni in writing to his brothers and his nephew Lionardo. Yet he preferred to call himself Michelangelo Buonarroti; and after his lifetime Buonarroti became fixed for the posterity of his younger brother. "The reason," says Condivi, "why the family in Florence changed its name from Canossa to Buonarroti was this: Buonarroto continued for many generations to be repeated in their house, down to the time of Michelangelo, who had ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... acknowledge her surpassing beauty, and have no difficulty in understanding how both nations should have incurred such suffering for her sake still, fair as she is, home she must go, that she bring not ruin on themselves and their posterity. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... passion and dramatic force, Tennyson here again is but typical of his era, to him one of reposeful content and calm, reasoning progress. Of permanent, lasting value much of his verse undoubtedly is, but not all of it will escape the indifference of posterity or the measuring-rod and censure, it may be, of the future critic. He had not the stirring strains or the careless rapture of other and earlier poets of the motherland,—his characteristic is more contemplative and brooding,—yet ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Teucer, behind the shield of Ajax,' interrupted Dr. Melmoth, 'or David with his stone and sling. No, no, young man; I have left unfinished in my study a learned treatise, important not only to the present age, but to posterity, for whose sake I must take heed to my safety. But, lo! who ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... of this victory at Lake George were far-reaching, and not forgotten by posterity, was shown, for example, nearly a century and a half after it was won, by the erection of a monument upon the site of the battle-field. On the eighth of September, 1903, the governors of four States—New York, Connecticut, Vermont, and ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... pockets." It should be remembered that the kidnapping justices whom the odious Jeffreys so indignantly denounced were tolerated and courted by their respectable and prosperous neighbors; and some of the worst charges, by which the judge's fame has been rendered odious to posterity, depend upon the evidence of men who, if they were not kidnappers themselves, saw nothing peculiarly atrocious in the conduct of magistrates who systematically sold their fellow-countrymen into a ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Author. After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity. Posterity hadn't heard anything about it, and ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... refuse and wars continue—if, within the coming decade, war should break out, whether actually involving the United States itself or not, more bloody and destructive than any that the world has seen—and if then the facts should be presented to posterity for judgment,—will the American people be held guiltless? It is improbable that the case ever could be so presented, for there is none to put the United States on trial, none to draw an indictment, none to prosecute. The world has ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... Some are first turned into nymphs and chrysalides, spinning threads about themselves; and this travail being over they come forth clad with a different body, furnished with wings with which they fly in the air as in their heaven, and celebrate marriages and lay eggs and provide posterity for themselves. [3] Besides these special instances all creatures in general that fly in the air know the proper food for their nourishment, not only what it is but where to find it; they know how to build nests for themselves, one ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... colony's first seigneur belongs to Louis Hebert, and it was a curious chain of events that brought him to the role of a yeoman in the St Lawrence valley. Like most of these pilgrim fathers of Canada, Hebert has left to posterity little or no information concerning his early life and his experience as tiller of virgin soil. That is a pity; for he had an interesting and varied career from first to last. What he did and what he saw others do during ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... worked hard for a good many years, I can now consider my latter end under conditions favourable to leisurely and extended thought, sometimes in a garden made, if rightly made, in my own image, sometimes in a house which was built aforetime, in a day when men wrought for posterity as well as for themselves. In such seed-plots it is impossible that one's thoughts should not take colour as they rise. Whithersoever I look I see as much permanency as is good for any sojourner upon earth; I see embodied tradition, respect for Nature's laws, attention to beauty, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... was a very worthy Gentleman, and Sir Henry had a particular Friendship for him; but (perhaps) that dy'd with him, and only a neighbourly Kindness, or something more than an ordinary Respect, surviv'd to his Posterity. The Day came that was to carry 'em to the young Lady Constance's, and her Lover was preparing to attend 'em, when the old Gentleman ask'd him, What he meant by that Preparation? And whether he design'd to leave ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... 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 ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... was 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 in preferring ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... brave Bess!—thy name shall be linked with mine, and we'll go down to posterity together; and what," added he, despondingly, "if it should be too much for thee? what if——but no matter! Better die now, while I am with thee, than fall into the knacker's hands. Better die with all thy honors upon thy head, than drag out thy old age ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... unselfish soul, cheering and supporting his weaker comrades in their upward and onward march—a picture of the guide and companion of his earlier years; and in so doing he has preserved his father's memory to posterity in a striking and an ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... standing before posterity will not be exalted by mere praise of his virtues and abilities, nor by any concealment of his limitations and faults. The stature of the great man, one of whose peculiar charms consisted in his being ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... have remarked will be a full confirmation of this. It is not every removal in time, which has the effect of producing veneration and esteem. We are not apt to imagine our posterity will excel us, or equal our ancestors. This phaenomenon is the more remarkable, because any distance in futurity weakens not our ideas so much as an equal removal in the past. Though a removal in the past, when very great, encreases our passions beyond a like removal in the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... long been one to conjure with, and all of us should experience pleasure (where surprise in his case is out of the question) on learning that his recent tour to Egypt, besides greatly benefiting his health, was the means of restoring to eager posterity one of the most ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... Assyrian cult upon that god alone. He erects a temple to the god at Calah, and overwhelms the deity with a great array of titles. The dedicatory inscription which the king places on a statue of Nebo closes with the significant words, 'O Posterity! trust in Nabu. Trust in no other god.'[305] Still we must not press such phrases too hard. Ramman-nirari III. had no intention of suppressing Ashur worship, for he mentions the god elsewhere, and assigns to him ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... agreeable relief to the dreary details of blood and battle, with which we have been so long occupied, and which were rapidly converting the garden of Europe into a wilderness. Such details indeed seem to have the deepest interest for contemporary writers; but the eye of posterity, unclouded by personal interest or passion, turns with satisfaction from them to those cultivated arts, which can make the wilderness to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott |
