Wills Quotes

“There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

“I'm swimming," Caspian announced. "Sort of. Do you think that will interfere with my mermaid search? If I fall into the ocean and I'm not drowning, do you think she'll bother to save me?"

"I think your mermaid probably has a life," Wills said..."You can't count on her to be waiting around for you every day. So drowning on purpose makes you an idiot.”
― Sarah Cross, Kill Me Softly

“Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.”
― Ronald Reagan, The Quest for Peace, The Cause of Freedom

“Say not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him.”
― Johann Kaspar Lavater

“The great man of the masses. It is easy to give the recipe for what the masses call a great man. By all means, supply them with something that they find very pleasant, or, first, put the idea into their heads that this or that would be very pleasant, and then give it to them. But on no account immediately: let it rather be won with great exertion, or let it seem so. The masses must have the impression that a mighty, indeed invincible, strength of will is present; at least it must be seen to be there. Everyone admires a strong will, because no one has it, and everyone tells himself that, if he had it, there would be no more limits for him and his egoism. Now, if it appears that this strong will is producing something very unpleasant for the masses, instead of listening to its own covetous desires, then everyone admires it all the more, and congratulates himself. For the rest, let him have all the characteristics of the masses: the less they are ashamed before him, the more popular he is. So, let him be violent, envious, exploitative, scheming, fawning, grovelling, puffed up, or, according to the circumstances, all of the above.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“A will can save one’s family from being put into a quagmired pit of legal conundrum, in case of death (which may even be untimely).”
― Henrietta Newton Martin

“The same thing happens in the search for the laws of historical movement.
The movement of mankind, proceeding from a countless number of human wills, occurs continuously.
To comprehend the laws of this movement is the goal of history. But in order to comprehend the laws of the continuous movement of the sum of all individual wills, human reason allows for arbitrary, discrete units. The first method of history consists in taking an arbitrary series of continuous events and examining it separately from others, whereas there is not and cannot be a beginning to any event, but one event always continuously follows another. The second method consists in examining the actions of one person, a king, a commander, as the sum of individual wills, whereas the sum of individual wills is never expressed in the activity of one historical person.
Historical science in its movement always takes ever smaller units for examination, and in this way strives to approach the truth. But however small the units that history takes, we feel that allowing for a unit that is separate from another, allowing for the beginning of some phenomenon, and allowing for the notion that all individual wills are expressed in the actions of one historical person, is false in itself.
Any conclusion of historical science, without the least effort on the part of criticism, falls apart like dust, leaving nothing behind, only as a result of the fact that criticism selects as an object for observation a larger or smaller discrete unit, which it always has the right to do, because any chosen historical unit is always arbitrary.
Only by admitting an infinitesimal unit for observation—a differential of history, that is, the uniform strivings of people—and attaining to the art of intigrating them (taking the sums of these infinitesimal quantities) can we hope to comprehend the laws of history.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“The unsigned will is one of those tropes of detective fiction that I’ve come to dislike, only because it’s so overused. In real life, a lot of people don’t even bother to make a will but then we’ve all managed to persuade ourselves that we’re going to live for ever. They certainly don’t go round the place threatening to change it in order to give someone the perfect excuse to come and kill them. It looked as if Alan Conway had done exactly that.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“He who works shall have what he wills.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“If your are an expatriate, a 'will' is required because, the laws of the country in which you reside would be different from that of your home country, and when the inevitable (death) occurs (untimely), your property /possessions may be exposed to the discretion of the state laws for the allocation of your property to someone, you may have never wished that they possess your property and be an heir to your assets.”
― Henrietta Newton Martin

“To mitigate complications and aid in the procedure of devolution of assets after death, a ‘will’ has to be well planned and drafted.”
― Henrietta Newton Martin

“He was sure, billions of of lire in art works : The Cezanne that stood to the left of the door opposite him might be worth that just by itself.”
― Donna Leon, Brunetti's Venice: Walks with the City's Best-Loved Detective

“It was then that he knew their wills were removed and replaced with his.”
― Nick Oliveri, The Conjurer