One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be — though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes will remain — because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone.
When I die there is nobody to take my place.
There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.
When the legends die, the dreams end; there is no more greatness.
Whether the prayer of Seneca was granted we do not know; but, as we do not again hear of Marcus, it is probable that he died before his father, and that the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, became extinct in the second generation.
Many people believe that our lives end not when we die but when the very last person who knew us dies. Memory is part of it, yes, but I think it's much more than memory.
I have a great legacy, tarnished somewhat by the move.
The thought of losing Ted Stevens, a man who was known to business and community leaders, Native chiefs and everyday Alaskans as Uncle Ted, is too difficult to fathom. He truly was the greatest of the Greatest Generation.
The New York that Frank Sinatra sang about, people will never know that place. The New Orleans that Louis Armstrong sang about is the New Orleans that's still there - it's preserved.
For tis not in mere death that men die most.
What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?
A few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron.
A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.
If you ask most high schoolers who Bruce Lee is, they will say that it someone they sit next to in English class.
The glory of a nation and an age is always the work of a few great persons, and it disappears with them.
Now The Beatles are four separate people, we don't have the impact we had when we were together.
I think Ric Flair has been tarnishing his legacy since 1990 - he has done more to tarnish his career then anything I could have said or did, then anybody could have said or did.
This country, and the West Coast, especially, is bad at preserving any cultural legacy.
If he's chasing the full restoration of his legacy, he's chasing something that he really can't get.
CBGB represents a lot to New York City and to underground rock and to new wave and post-punk and whatever. But, you know, it's like tearing down the Jefferson Memorial or something.
The people of Shishmaref want their community to survive, but they are holding on to their legacy by a very delicate thread indeed. The threat of their land disappearing is only the beginning.
Of course we've lost so many superstars who've made jazz what it is. We've lost so many musicians who created new things and changed the way we think about music and who took jazz to a new level. So jazz is suffering from that. But we still have a lot of incredible people playing jazz in the world. We have a lot of people leading the way.
Death, death. Now I won't be able to write my beautiful memoirs.
When the great jazz and blues clubs closed - joints where the cash register rang loudly and there wasn't ESPN on TV over the bandstand, and people smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey and hollered 'Play on!' - When those places closed, I was pretty much done.
The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
