Washington Irving Quotes

What I fear is not being forgotten after my death, but, rather, not being enough forgotten. As we were saying, it is not our books that survive, but our poor lives that linger in the histories.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

Total oblivion is the fate of almost everything in this world. I'm very likely to suffer that same fate; my work will probably not be remembered, and if any of it is, if any of those novels is fated to be one of those novels that is still being read 50 or 100 years after it was written, I've probably already written it.

After I die, I'll be forgotten.

To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.

I would like to be forgotten. What's so good about being remembered?

Age makes all things greater after their death; a name comes to the tongue easier from the grave.

To be remembered at all is an achievement of sorts.

One-hundred years from now, nobody's going to remember that I played for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays - nobody!

Money, titles, belts - you're not going to take with you when you die. History stays forever. That's why I decided to go for history.

When I'm dead are they going to remember me ? I don't really think about it, it's up to them. When I'm dead, who cares ? I don't.

How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.

I don't expect to live forever, nor do I repine over that, but I am weak enough to want to be remembered forever. - Yet how few of those who have lived, even of those who have accomplished far more than I have, linger on in world memory for even a single century after death

Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced.

Oh, I'll be forgotten too, don't worry.

Nobody will go on being remembered for a very long time, unless you're Shakespeare or Milton. I have no hope of being remembered at all.

Just to be remembered is good enough for me. Lots of people are forgotten.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

The President of today is the postage stamp of tomorrow.

I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.

If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth the reading, or do things worth the writing.

It sure is a nice feeling to know that people will remember you after you're gone, that you'll manage to be a little bit of history.

People will forget me pretty quick.

It doesn't matter how popular an actor you are: nobody will remember you forever.

How many other people get a chance to be remembered forever? And that's what I really want. I want to be remembered forever.