Source: James Nasmyth engineer, 1883, p. 1
Context: Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us. The sentiment of ancestry seems to be inherent in human nature, especially in the more civilised races. At all events, we cannot help having a due regard for the history of our forefathers. Our curiosity is stimulated by their immediate or indirect influence upon ourselves. It may be a generous enthusiasm, or, as some might say, a harmless vanity, to take pride in the honour of their name. The gifts of nature, however, are more valuable than those of fortune; and no line of ancestry, however honourable, can absolve us from the duty of diligent application and perseverance, or from the practice of the virtues of self-control and self-help.
“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives…”
Source: The Great Wall of China
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Franz Kafka 266
author 1883–1924Related quotes
“Without a sense of history, our expectations are the product of how we live now.”
Lean Logic, (2016), p. 152, entry on Expectations https://leanlogic.online/expectations/
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy
“Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show,
We may our ends by our beginnings know.”
Of Prudence, line 225.
“We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish.”
A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/D-S-Bradford/A-Call-to-the-Stars-Ii-A-Home-in-the-Sky, verse 1
A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky (2016)
"On the Sufferings of the World"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism
Context: In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.