“I hold no dream of fortune vast,
Nor seek undying fame.
I do not ask when life is past
That many know my name.I may not own the skill to rise
To glory's topmost height,
Nor win a place among the wise,
But I can keep the right.And I can live my life on earth
Contented to the end,
If but a few shall know my worth
And proudly call me friend.”
Success.
Just Folks (1917)
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Edgar Guest 61
American writer 1881–1959Related quotes

Heathcliff (Ch. XVI).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe; I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I can not find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!

“If my character is flawed by a few minor faults, but is otherwise decent and moral, if you can point out only a few scattered blemishes on an otherwise immaculate surface, if no one can accuse me of greed, or of prurience, or of profligacy, if I live a virtuous life, free of defilement (pardon, for a moment, my self-praise), and if I am to my friends a good friend, my father deserves all the credit… As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude and praise. I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedman's son.”
Atqui si vitiis mediocribus ac mea paucis
mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si
egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos,
si neque avaritiam neque sordes nec mala lustra
obiciet vere quisquam mihi, purus et insons,
ut me collaudem, si et vivo carus amicis...
at hoc nunc
laus illi debetur et a me gratia maior.
nil me paeniteat sanum patris huius, eoque
non, ut magna dolo factum negat esse suo pars,
quod non ingenuos habeat clarosque parentis,
sic me defendam.
Book I, satire vi, lines 65–92
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

“What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can.”
In a 1965 interview with Walter Cronkite, as quoted in "Just A Couple Of Legends" CBS News.com (20 May 1998) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/05/20/entertainment/main9899.shtml

Variant translation by Pearl S. Buck: "Alas, I was born to die! How can I know what those who come after me and read my book will think of it? I cannot even know what I myself, born into another incarnation, will think of it. I do not even know if I myself afterwards can even read this book. Why therefore should I care?" (All Men are Brothers, 1933; p. xiii)
Preface to Water Margin