James Boswell Quotes

I don't think about my legacy, if indeed, I have one.

I hate to think of the day when nobody remembers me as an actor and I can't get good tables in restaurants.

I've always been aware that to be named after someone from the past carries with it all kinds of bittersweetness.

After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

I'm attending to my legacy, making sure that it travels the universe in the best shape I can get it into. For as long as I'm alive, I'll still be its interpreter.

I just find that there's something about looking back on interviews, whether for purposes of remembering what I said about something or if it's for posterity when I'm 75.

I think all creative people are operating from the fear that, of the best of what they did, will anybody remember it? Will anybody tell stories about them? Will anybody keep those pictures on the mantle long after they are gone? It's why people write stories. It's peoples' grave markers.

I promise that if you will keep your journals and records, they will indeed be a source of great inspiration to your families, to your children, your grandchildren, and others, on through the generations. Each of us is important to those who are near and dear to us and as our posterity reads of our life's experiences, they, too, will come to know and love us. And in that glorious day when our families are together in the eternities, we will already be acquainted.

The next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.

My son tells me, 'Do you realize you are the last one? The last person who was an eyewitness to the golden age?' Young people, even in Hollywood, ask me, 'Were you really married to Humphrey Bogart?' 'Well, yes, I think I was,' I reply. You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks. I could show you some, but I'd have to climb ladders, and I can't climb

Let no family go into eternity without having left their memoirs for their children, their grandchildren, and their posterity.

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

But today when I am 17 and warm and well fed, I'm keeping this journal for myself so I can always remember life as we knew it, life as we know it, for a time when I am no longer in the sunroom.

Will you be remembered, how would you be remembered, why wouldn’t you fight for the greatest achievement ever?

I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and of people who will see a world that I shall never know.

My mind immediately shot to South Africa the moment I sat down to think what I was going to write, what I was going to say. There was no other choice.

I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.

The good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, and volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the land.

Realize, how many classics I gave you/Perhaps if you think back you'll realize that I made you

I think continually of those who were truly great.

Write to register history, and name each thing. Write what should not be forgotten.

The other day, the way people [do] who are approaching their 80th birthday, I was thinking about all the last business - funerals and where do you want to be buried - and I thought if anything were to be inscribed on my tombstone, I said let it be that.

These are the kinds of things a guy thinks about when he visits his own grave.