"It is permissible even for a dying..." - Quote by Virginia Woolf
It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?... What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.
More by Virginia Woolf
“To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.”
“If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy.”
“Now the writer, I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of ... reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us.”
More on Legacy
“Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.”
“Let not one single life have passed in vain. What really matters is who you love and how you love.”
“Everyone should try to scratch their name on the bomb of life.”
More on Fame
“The painful warrior famous for fight, After a thousand victories, once foil'd, Is from the books of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd”
“That equals to being a fool, having fame and no fortune. A lot of guys out there have fame doing this and doing that, but they are broke.”
“Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.”