It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry. [ Hosea Ballou ]

Not in nature, but in man is all the beauty and the worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for its pride. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman. Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings. [ Colton ]

There have been many men who left behind them that which hundreds of years have not worn out. The earth has Socrates and Plato to this day. The world is richer yet by Moses and the old prophets than by the wisest statesmen. We are indebted to the past. We stand in the greatness of ages that are gone rather than in that of our own. But of how many of us shall it be said that, being dead, we yet speak? [ Beecher ]