“The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”
Permalink: William Wordsworth
About this quote
Wordsworth is recalling the village schoolmaster of his childhood, who died poor and unrecorded. The phrase 'little, nameless, unremembered' is doing the real work: what is best is also what leaves no trace.
Source: The Prelude, Book VIII