To serve thy generation, this thy fate:
Written in- water, swiftly fades thy name;
But he who loves his kind does, first and late,
A work too great for fame. [ Mary Clemmer ]

The wisdom of one generation will be folly in the next. [ Priestley ]

A great man is one who affects the mind of his generation. [ Beaconsfield ]

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman, of the next generation. [ James Freeman Clarke ]

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the herd. [ Thoreau ]

Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing. [ Disraeli ]

Every successive generation becomes a living memorial of our public schools, and a living example of their excellence. [ Joseph Story ]

Some men so dislike the dust kicked up by the generation they belong to, that, being unable to pass, they lag behind it. [ Hare ]

Books are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind, to be delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those that are yet unborn. [ Addison ]

Let there be an entire abstinence from intoxicating drinks throughout this country during the period of a single generation, and a mob would be as impossible as combustion without oxygen. [ Horace Mann ]

The wisest of us must, for by far the most part, judge like the simplest; estimate importance by mere magnitude, and expect that which strongly affects our own generation, will strongly affect those that are to follow. [ Carlyle ]

Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation. [ Lowell ]

A corrupted and weakened community breaks down in immense catastrophes; the iron harrow of revolutions crushes men like the clods of the field; but, in the blood-stained furrows germinates a new generation, and the soul aggrieved, believes again. [ Guizot ]

Each successive generation plunges into the abyss of passion, without the slightest regard to the fatal effects which such conduct has produced upon their predecessors; and lament, when too late, the rashness with which they slighted the advice of experience, and stifled the voice of reason. [ Steele ]

What we call genius may, perhaps, in more strict propriety, be described as the spirit of discovery. Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought. It is always in advance of its time. It is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes. For this reason it is called a seer, and hence its songs have been prophecies. [ Simms ]

This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth birthday. The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]