On his death-bed, charging his friends that no fiction or counterfeit (so he called statues) should be made of him, Agesilaus said, “If I have done any honorable exploit, that is my monument; but if I have done none, all your statues will signify nothing.”

Epaminondas declared on his death-bed that his victories of “Leuctra and Mantinea are daughters enough to keep my name alive.” / Alexander I of Russia, declined a monument to commemorate his military exploits, with the words, “May a monument be erected to me in your hearts, as it is to you in mine;” an echo of the sentiment of the Czar Peter III, refusing a golden statue, “If by good government I could raise a memorial in my people’s hearts, that would be the statue for me.” / “They offer me a statue,” said Bonaparte, when First Consul, “but I must look at the pedestal: they may make it a prison.”