If History were taught in the form of stories it would never be forgotten. ~ Rudyard Kipling
That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.
~ Steve Jobs
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement address
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
A legacy is like a safe-deposit box filled with valuables. It is only natural that the owner of the box would tell the recipient what is in it, how everything works and why it is so important, before turning over the key. ~ Paul J. Meyer
Everything you are and possess today, whether good or bad, will pass down to those who come after you. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it’s the family stories that are worth the storage. ~ Ellen Goodman, the Boston Globe
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we chose to say or do matters, matters cosmically. ~ Madeleine L’Engle
Not to reveal yourself to another is never to believe the real you is worth loving. ~ Gail Whiting
Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles. ~ Steve Jobs
The more we know about our families, the more we know about ourselves, and the more freedom we have to determine how we want to live. ~ Monica McGoldrick
No legacy is so rich as honesty. ~ William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. ~ Steve Jobs
I had an inheritance from my father,
It was the moon and the sun.
And though I roam all over the world,
The spending of it’s never done. ~ Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave. ~ Tavis Smiley, The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
We are the characters in the stories of the next generation. ~ Unknown
The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith. ~ Billy Graham
Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you. ~ Shannon L. Alder
Language allows us to reach out to people, to touch them with our innermost fears, hopes, disappointments, victories. To reach out to people we’ll never meet. It’s the greatest legacy you could ever leave your children or your loved ones: The history of how you felt. ~ Simon Van Booy
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. ~ Benjamin Franklin
The only thing you take with you when you’re gone is what you leave behind. ~ John Allston
Our lives may feel routine and monotonous, hardly worth writing about. Yet buried in the details of each individual life is unique autobiographical material that has universal human interest. This is true of people at any age and from any background. ~ James E. Birren, Associate Director of the UCLA Center on Aging