C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Monuments
Brave deeds are the monuments of brave men.
Tombs are the clothes of the dead: a grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered.
Monuments, like men, submit to fate.
Monuments and eulogy belong to the dead.
Footprints of history on the pages of time.
Monuments themselves memorials need.
Wouldst thou behold his monument? Look around!
Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.
When old Time shall lead him to his end, goodness and he fill up one monument.
If I have done any honorable exploit, that is my monument; but if I have done none, all your statues will signify nothing.
Those only deserve a monument who do not need one, that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.
Monuments may be builded to express the affection or pride of friends, or to display their wealth, but they are only valuable for the characters which they perpetuate.
If by good government I could raise a memorial in my people’s hearts, that would be the statue for me.
If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps.***An hour in clamor, and a quarter in rheum.
Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.
Monuments! what are they? the very pyramids have forgotten their builders, or to whom they were dedicated. Deeds, not stones, are the true monuments of the great.
There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one.
I have completed a monument more lasting than brass, and more sublime than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the wasting shower, the unavailing north-wind, or an innumerable succession of years, and the flight of seasons, shall be able to demolish.
The monument means a world of memories, a world of deeds, a world of tears, and a world of glories.***By the subtle chemistry that no man knows, all the blood that was shed by our brethren, all the lives that were devoted, all the grief that was felt, at last crystallized itself into granite, rendering immortal the great truth for which they died, and it stands there to-day.
When we see the many grave-stones which have fallen in, which have been defaced by the footsteps of the congregation, which lie buried under the ruins of the churches, that have themselves crumbled together over them; we may fancy the life after death to be as a second life, into which man enters in the figure, or the picture, or the inscription, and lives longer there than when he was really alive. But this figure also, this second existence, dies out too, sooner or later. Time will not allow himself to be cheated of his rights with the monuments of men or with themselves.