We must take our chance, Sir, as to the light in which posterity will regard us.I do not decline its judgment, nor withhold myself from its scrutiny....
Never did a man have such popularity; never did a famous writer leave so little to posterity which posterity can value.While Voltaire was indirectly undermining the religious convictions of mankind, the Encyclopedists more directly attacked the sources of religious belief, and openly denied what Voltaire had doubted....
Therefore, unless he be an impostor, he need give himself no trouble regarding his future.His works shall serve as a clue, produced century after century, along which posterity shall feel its way back to his studio and heart....
The drinking-bout, however, is perhaps an ill-natured addition.C.'s fame among his contemporaries was much greater than that which posterity has accorded to him.His poems are marred by conceits and a forced and artificial brilliancy....
Since that time the account is not so even, and I dare appeal to any impartial person whether my side in it be that of the debtor.As to the opinion of mankind in general, and the judgment which posterity will pass on these matters, I am under no great concern....
Your life is that which shall continue fresh in the memory of ages to come, which posterity will cherish and eternity itself keep guard over.Much has been done by you which men will admire; much remains to be done which they can praise....
It was anticipated by secret hostility, so records tradition, that Michael Angelo would fail signally in the unaccustomed work, and that his merit as an artist would pale altogether before that of Raphael's.I need hardly write how entirely malice was balked in the verdict to which posterity has set its seal....
It is painful to make this confession; but I owe it to the reader, because I would not have him to suppose that either in this or in the future volumes of my History I shall be able to redeem my pledge, and to perform all that I promised.Something I hope to achieve which will interest the thinkers of this age; and, something, perhaps, on which posterity may build....
It is important that he should think that you depend immediately upon him.If you see that after his arrest they take severe measures against him, you will have a thousand ways of parrying the blame which posterity might throw upon you....
It is perhaps hardly necessary to explain that in the words "successors of Tennyson" I make no reference to an actual or a prospective Poet Laureate.The position primarily held by Tennyson in his lifetime, and the only position in which posterity will regard him, is the position of the poet.That he was the laureate also is no doubt a matter of some biographical interest, but it is of little further significance....
They were too rhetorical to suit the taste of Lord Brougham.Rhetorical exhibitions, however brilliant, are not those which posterity most highly value, and lose their charm when the occasions which produced them have passed away.Canning's presence was commanding and dignified, his articulation delicate and precise, his voice clear and musical; while the curl of his lip and the glance of his eye would silence almost any antagonist....
But the Kategoroi made no bones about it.They called the citizen as a witness, and gave the criminal a reminder which posterity held in awe.Their point, as they always explained it to me, is, that the citizen's health and strength are essential to the state....
Biographical research has, moreover, destroyed many picturesque legends, with some of which posterity cannot part without a pang of regret.We are reluctant to believe that William Tell was a mythological marksman and Gessler a wholly impossible bailiff....
But it soon proved that this was only one among his thousand departments, and his hearers felt, as was said of old Fuller, as if he had served his time at every trade in town.But it must now be owned that these astonishing results were bought by some intellectual sacrifices which his nearer friends do not all recognize, but which posterity will mourn.Such a rate of speed is incompatible with the finest literary execution....
It is very curious how deep-rooted and enduring is the prejudice against writers in England.Not only is no attempt made to rate them at their true value, at the value which posterity puts upon their work; but they are continually treated as outcasts and denied the most ordinary justice.The various trials of Oscar Wilde are to the thinker an object lesson in the force of this prejudice, but some may explain the prejudice against Wilde on the score of the peculiar abhorrence with which the offence ascribed to him is regarded in England....
