'We are always doing,'says he,'something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us.'

-Addison,Joseph
  In The Spectator no.583, 20  Aug.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

-Burke, Edmund
  Reflections on the Revolution in France.

C'est l'actuel qui compte. Invoquer sa poste¤  rite¤  , c'est faire un discours aux asticots. It isthepresentthatcounts.To invoke one'sposterity isto make a speech to maggots.

-Destouches
  Voyage au bout de la nuit ( Journey to the End of Night, translated by John H P Marks,1960).

Religion Caesar never knew Thy posterity shall sway, Where his eagles never flew, None as invincible as they.

-Cowper,William
  Poems,'Boadicea: an Ode'.

: If we beat the King ninety-nine times, yet he is King still so will his posterity be after him; but if the King beat us once we shall be hanged, and our posterity made slaves. : My Lord, if this be so, why did we take up arms at first? This is against fighting hereafter. If so, let us make peace, be it never so base.

-Cromwell, Oliver
  EARLOFMANCHESTEROLIVER CROMWELL1644  Recorded in The Calendar of State Papers,10 Nov.

TheYouth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Sybil, bk.6, ch.13

Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstoneöan extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisyand superstition and with one commanding characteristic.Whether Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying, or scribblingöneveragentleman.Heisso vain that he wants to figure in history as the settler of all the great questions; but a parliamentary Constitution is not favourable to such ambitions. Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
c.1874  Letter.

I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
On correcting proofs of his last parliamentary speech, 31 Mar. Quoted in Robert Blake Disraeli, ch.32.

To evoke posterity Is to weep on your own grave, Ventriloquizing for the unborn.

-Graves, Robert von Ranke
  'To Evoke Posterity'.

The love of posterity is a consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.

-Hawthorne, Nathaniel
  The American Notebooks (published1868), ch.3.

In all museums throughout the world one may see plaster casts of footprints of weird animals, footprints preserved for posterity, not because the animals were particularly good of their sort, but because they had the luck to walkon the lava while it was cooling. There is just a faint hope that something of the same sort may happen to us.

-Paterson, Banjo (Andrew Barton)
Of Henry Lawson and himself writing in a new land. Quoted in Rosamund Campbell and Philippa Harvie A Literary Heritage: 'Banjo' Paterson (1988), introduction.

What,Mr Speaker! and sowearetobeggarourselvesfor fear of vexing posterity! Now, I would ask the honourable gentleman, and still more honourable House, why should we put ourselves out of our way to doanything for posterity; for what has posterity done for us? SeeAddison 7:40.

-Roche, Sir Boyle
Debate in Irish House of Commons, quoted in SirJonah Barrington Personal Sketches and Recollections of his ownTimes (1827).

Cover your assöthe bureaucrat's method of protecting his posterior from posterity.

-Safire,William
  Safire's Political Dictionary, introduction.