“All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

316.
Aes Triplex (1878)
Context: All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas?

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Robert Louis Stevenson 118

Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer 1850–1894

Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) Journalist and writer

Source: If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Beauty can be sad. You're proof of that.
When the damage is done, you're damaged goods.
That's not to say it's not okay.
I wouldn't have it any other way.A heart, a heart that hurts, is a heart, a heart that works.”

Juliana Hatfield (1967) American guitarist/singer-songwriter and author

"Universal Heart-Beat" · official video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMx8FVUgxIM
Only Everything (1995)

“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists

“He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Phaedo
Plato, Phaedo

“The deep conviction... that nothing good for Germany or the world can come out of the present German regime, has made me avoid the country in whose spiritual tradition I am more deeply rooted than are those who for three years have been trying to find courage enough to declare before the world that I am not a German. And I feel to the bottom of my heart that I have done right in the eyes of my contemporaries and of posterity.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Responding to anti-semitic propaganda and to criticisms of German writers living in exile during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany, as quoted in "Homage to Thomas Mann" in The New Republic (1 April 1936) http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114269/thomas-mann-stands-anti-semitism-stacks

“I am quite ready, Simmias and Cebes, that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to other gods who are wise and good and to men departed who are better than those whom I leave behind; and therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead, and, as has been said of old, some far better thing for the good than for the evil.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

“You just have to keep trying to do good work, and hope that it leads to more good work.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Orange County Register, July 9, 1999
Context: You just have to keep trying to do good work, and hope that it leads to more good work. I want to look back on my career and be proud of the work, and be proud that I tried everything. Yes, I want to look back and know that I was terrible at a variety of things.

“It must be good to die in the knowledge that one has done some truthful work… and to know that, as a result, one will live on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

“A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician

The Disowned (1828), Chapter xxxiii.

“All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.”

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Robert Louis Stevenson 118

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