“Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.”

Nelly Dean (Ch. XIII).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

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Emily Brontë 151
English novelist and poet 1818–1848

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“Now that's what we've got to do in our world today. We've left a lot of precious values behind; we've lost a lot of precious values. And if we are to go forward, if we are to make this a better world in which to live, we've got to go back. We've got to rediscover these precious values that we've left behind.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)
Context: Sometimes, you know, it's necessary to go backward in order to go forward. That's an analogy of life. I remember the other day I was driving out of New York City into Boston, and I stopped off in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to visit some friends. And I went out of New York on a highway that’s known as the Merritt Parkway, it leads into Boston, a very fine parkway. And I stopped in Bridgeport, and after being there for two or three hours I decided to go on to Boston, and I wanted to get back on the Merritt Parkway. And I went out thinking that I was going toward the Merritt Parkway. I started out, and I rode, and I kept riding, and I looked up and I saw a sign saying two miles to a little town that I knew I was to bypass—I wasn't to pass through that particular town. So I thought I was on the wrong road. I stopped and I asked a gentleman on the road which way would I get to the Merritt Parkway. And he said, "The Merritt Parkway is about twelve or fifteen miles back that way. You've got to turn around and go back to the Merritt Parkway; you are out of the way now." In other words, before I could go forward to Boston, I had to go back about twelve or fifteen miles to get to the Merritt Parkway. May it not be that modern man has gotten on the wrong parkway? And if he is to go forward to the city of salvation, he's got to go back and get on the right parkway. [... ] Now that's what we've got to do in our world today. We've left a lot of precious values behind; we've lost a lot of precious values. And if we are to go forward, if we are to make this a better world in which to live, we've got to go back. We've got to rediscover these precious values that we've left behind.

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“In those former times we lived. Now we hardly live any more, since we have lived. They who we were are dead, for we are here.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts
Context: In those former times we lived. Now we hardly live any more, since we have lived. They who we were are dead, for we are here. Her glances come to me, but they do not join again the two surviving voids that we are; her look does not wipe out our widowhood, nor change anything. And I, I am too imbued with clear-sighted simplicity and truth to answer "no" when it is "yes." In this moment by my side Marie is like me.
The immense mourning of human hearts appears to us. We dare not name it yet; but we dare not let it not appear in all that we say.

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“Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value.”

Source: Demian (1919), p. 146
Context: Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.

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“Well, hardly ever. Unless the individual happens to be oneself. The Sunday Timess list ends with one living relic. On the face of it, the appearance of the name Carl Djerassi is patently ridiculous by any criterion but one: as a surrogate for the Pill.”

Carl Djerassi (1923–2015) American chemistry professor, inventor, author, playwright

[This man's pill: reflections on the 50th birthday of the pill, Oxford University Press, 2003, 1–4, https://books.google.com/books?id=6lFxAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1]

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