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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Posterity

Time will unveil all things to posterity.

Euripides.

Why should we legislate for posterity? What has posterity ever done for us?

Sir Boyle Roche.

Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity!

John Q. Adams.

The judgment of posterity is truer, because it is free from envy and malevolence.

Cicero.

People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.

Burke.

Posterity preserves only what will pack into small compass. Jewels are handed down from age to age; less portable valuables disappear.

Lord Stanley.

We are too careless of posterity; not considering that as they are, so the next generation will be.

William Penn.

If we would amend the world we should mend ourselves; and teach our children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.

William Penn.

Here you would know, and enjoy, what posterity will say of Washington. For a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand years.

Benj. Franklin.

The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.

Hawthorne.

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.

Colton.

What does not wasting time change! The age of our parents, worse than that of our grandsires, has brought us forth more impious still, and we shall produce a more vicious progeny.

Horace.

With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight or influence with posterity who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own time.

Colton.

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. “Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;” whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

Swift.