moral legacy Quotes

It is a bitter thought to an avaricious spirit that by and by all these accumulations must be left behind. We can only carry away from this world the flavor of our good or evil deeds.

No good thing is ever lost. Nothing dies, not even life which gives up one form only to resume another. No good action, no good example dies. It lives forever in our race. While the frame moulders and disappears, the deed leaves an indelible stamp, and molds the very thought and will of future generations.

When our souls shall leave this dwelling, the glory of one fair and virtuous action is above all the 'scutcheons on our tomb, or silken banners over us.

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?

Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of their fathers.

Naked a man comes into the world and naked he leaves it, after all is said and done he leaves nothing except the good deeds he leaves behind.

I'd rather speak as a student of philosophy. Philosophically it makes no sense, absolutely makes no sense. Why should people inherit evil things when their memories could contain and should invoke good things?

Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious.

What a man thinks in his spirit in the world, that he does after his departure from the world when he becomes a spirit.

We burn the evil men do with their mortal remains. We treasure the memory of the good they do, and distance magnifies it.

This I regard as history's highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds.

But the good deed, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grows and gleams immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust.

Vaclav Havel had moral stature. The president in first Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic in many ways is a ceremonial role. And so, speaking out and having that strong moral fiber, people just knew that he told the truth to people who had only heard lies. And so I think his - that's his legacy.

the desire to enforce our own moral and spiritual criteria upon posterity is quite as strong as the desire to enforce them upon contemporaries.

The righteous man walks in his integrity; His children are blessed after him.

When good men die their goodness does not perish.

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.