George Eliot
1872 · Warwickshire, England · London
for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Middlemarch, the last sentence
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Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863 · Illinois, USA · At the dedication of a cemetery for the soldiers who died in the war
world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
The Gettysburg Address
Virgil P. Vergilius Maro
c. 19 BC · Rome · Aeneas to his companions, shipwrecked on a strange shore
Call back your courage, and send away sad fear. Perhaps one day it will be a joy to remember even this.
revocate animos, maestumque timorem
mittite: forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.Aeneid, book 1, lines 202–203
Du Mu 杜牧
c. 825 · Tang China
The people of Qin had no time to grieve for themselves, and those who came after grieved for them. If those who come after grieve for them and do not take warning, they will only make those after them grieve for them in turn.
秦人不暇自哀，而後人哀之；後人哀之而不鑑之，亦使後人而復哀後人也。"Rhapsody on the Epang Palace," the close
1 in 100 Billion · The social network of those who came before us