inheritance quotes

I'm spending my children's inheritance.

-Anonymous
Bumper sticker alluding to the economics of Social Security. Quoted in the NewYork Times, 24 Feb1995.

Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Psalms 2:7^9.

The people which ceases to care for its literary inheritance becomes barbaric; the people which ceases to produce literature ceases to move in thought and sensibility.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism.

Every lunch time I went to see how my inheritance was proceeding. Sometimes the deaths column brought good news. Sometimes the births column brought bad. The advent of twin sons to the Duke was a terrible blow. Fortunatelyanepidemic ofdiphtheria restored thestatus quo almost immediately.

- Robert Hamer
  Kind Hearts and Coronets (with  John Dighton).

Every human being is born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott
Quoted in R S Peters (ed)  TheConcept of Education (1966), ch.10, 'Learning and Teaching'.

This isthe land God gave to Andy Stewartwe have our inheritance. There shall be no ardour, there shall be indifference. There shall not be excellence, there shall be the average. We shall be the intrepid hunters of golf balls.

-A'Ghobhainn
  'TheWhite Air of March'.

John Bull has gone to India And all must pay him heed For histories are there to prove That none of another breed Has had a like inheritance, Or sucked such milk as he, And there's no luck about a house If it lacks honesty. The ghost of Roger Casement Is beating on the door.

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'The Ghost of Roger Casement', stanza 3. Collected in New Poems (1938).