Emotional Legacy Quotes

Love leaves legacy. How you treated other people, not your wealth or accomplishments, is the most enduring impact you can leave on earth.

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

I must admit, even though I'm the product of two Jewish parents, I think the Irish temper got in there somewhere, so I'm going to check Mom's genealogy.

I'm in constant inner dialogue with my father still.

I had a critical father. I'm more like my father. He was a sales rep for pharmaceutical companies.

My dad was a keen philatelist and, when he died, he left me an album he'd curated over some 40 years. He'd handpicked every item, saying each one reminded him of me. I opened it to discover the pages were full of beige stamps bearing the image of George V. Take from that what you will.

The kind of hero worship you have, when a parent is lost early and you don't know all their faults and misgivings, is a very strong influence.

My grandparents invented joylessness. They were not fun. I've already had more fun with my grandchildren than my grandparents ever had with me.

If my time on earth were through and she must face the world without me, is the love I gave her in the past gonna be enough to last?

I think because my parents died in their early 50s, mid 50s, I always thought I would die young. And that's been both a useful thing and I suspect something that's haunted me a little bit.

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

I think you never forget your childhood, whether it was happy or unhappy.

Life and love would go on. Even though it would happen without me, the idea brought me joy.

If you see in your children most of your own faults, you have failed as a parent, but succeeded as a neurotic.

My father died when I was 7. I was his favorite child, and he was my beloved father. I brought him along with me all through my life. Every elderly man has a bit of my father in him for me.

Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that.

...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.

I didn't want to make the same mistake my parents made. I didn't want my love to fade away one day like an old scar. I wanted it to burn forever.

Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime.

I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me.

To watch how lovingly your children parent their own children is to know profound achievement.

Our instinctive emotions are those that we have inherited from a much more dangerous world, and contain, therefore, a larger portion of fear than they should.

May a monument be erected to me in your hearts, as it is to you in mine.

I've heard that my father was a really funny man in company, but I never got to see that side of him. I was just 17 when he died, and he didn't know that I was funny.

The trauma of South Asian people escapes the confines of our own times. We're not just healing from what's been inflicted onto us as children... it is generations of pain embedded into our souls.