I think part of what it means to live meaningfully is to leave behind a legacy to our family, friends and the world at large. If our loved ones and others remember us as an example to emulate, that is a huge legacy. If you are good at doing something, consider leaving behind your works to inspire and enrich future generations. For example, if you have a passion or gift for words, you can leave behind a hand-written journal, a scrap book of poems or a blog, all of which are windows to a life lived. If you are gifted in music, you can leave behind songs and other musical compositions. If you have an eye for art, you can leave behind artworks of whatever form. Notice I’ve left out money, that most concrete expression of legacy because money itself is uninteresting from the viewpoint of what is intangible but precious, things like morals and values, and passion, imagination and creativity.
Below are quotes by artists, writers and other luminaries on the subject of legacy in the broad sense I’ve just described.
LEGACY QUOTES
“If you’re going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can’t be erased.”
~ Maya Angelou (1928-2014), American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist.
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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
~ May Angelou
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“If you knew how quickly they forget the dead, you would stop living to impress people.”
Eccelesiastes 9:5
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“It doesn’t matter what you do … so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it … The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is the touching … The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
~ Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), American author and screen writer.
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“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”
~ Jimmy Carter (1924-2024), American politician and humanitarian.
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“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
~ Howard Thurman (1899-1981), American theologian, educator and writer.
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“The most regrettable people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative restive power uprising, and gave it neither power nor time.”
~ Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet.
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“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
~ Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), founding father of the United States.
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“Perhaps some day I’ll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”
~ Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), American poet and writer.
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DO NOT ASK YOUR CHILDREN
Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
~ William Martin (1888-1934)
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“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
~ Proverbs 22:6