“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.”
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Vincent Van Gogh 238
Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853–1890Related quotes
“No one deserves to live who has not at least one good-man-and-true for a friend.”
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus
“One must have a good memory to keep the promises one has made.”
Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
“One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.”
I.59
Human, All Too Human (1878)
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties
Context: The man who works, the man who does great deeds, in the end dies as surely as the veriest idler who cumbers the earth’s surface; but he leaves behind him the great fact that he has done his work well. So it is with nations. While the nation that has dared to be great, that has had the will and the power to change the destiny of the ages, in the end must die, yet no less surely the nation that has played the part of the weakling must also die; and whereas the nation that has done nothing leaves nothing behind it, the nation that has done a great work really continues, though in changed form, to live forevermore. The Roman has passed away exactly as all the nations of antiquity which did not expand when he expanded have passed away; but their very memory has vanished, while he himself is still a living force throughout the wide world in our entire civilization of today, and will so continue through countless generations, through untold ages.