What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The whole earth is the tomb of heroic men and their story is not given only on stone over their clay but abides everywhere without visible symbol woven into the stuff of other mens lives.
A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.
I think of a monument as being symbolic and for the people and therefore rhetorical, not honest, not personal.
I especially remember that on All Souls Day, when so many people wanted new monuments for the graves, our whole family pitched in. I did the lettering on the stones, my brother did the carving, and my sisters put the finishing touches on them, the gold leaf and all that.
Statues and pictures and verse may be grand, But they are not the Life for which they stand.
The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history.
The poets' scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.
Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.
Who could look on these monuments without reflecting on the vanity of mortals in thus offering up testimonials of their respect for persons of whose very names posterity is ignorant?
As I passed along the side walls of Westminster Abbey, I hardly saw any thing but marble monuments of great admirals, but which were all too much loaded with finery and ornaments, to make on me at least, the intended impression.
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