That best portion of a good man's life, His little,
nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of
love.
|
Thackeray is everybody's past — is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed forever in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at once the hundred ghosts of oneself.
william makepeace thackerayOften his name was, in a generation or two, forgotten. It was from this brotherhood that America has drawn its statesmen and its judges. A free and self-governing Republic stands as a monument for the little-known and unremembered as well as for the famous men of our profession.
robert h. jacksonOn that best portion of a good man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
william wordsworth