“Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it”

Entry in progress—B.P.
 
Wikipedia: Edward Bok
Edward Bok (born Eduard Willem Gerard Cesar Hidde Bok) (October 9, 1863 – January 9, 1930) was a Dutch born American editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He was editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal for thirty years. Bok is credited with coining the term living room as the name for room of a house that had commonly been called the parlor or drawing room. He also created Bok Tower Gardens in central Florida.
 
Google Books
High Adventurers
By Mary Rosetta Parkman
New York, NY: The Century Company
1920
Pg. 220:
“Don’t forget that good work lives and grows just as trees do. Soon happy lives make their nests in places where once there was neither shelter nor safety,” the grandmother would say; and then she would add, looking straight into the eager faces of the children, “Always remember that each of you must make the world better and more beautiful because you have lived in it.”
 
Edward Bok could not remember when he had first heard those words. it must have been long before he was really able to understand their meaning.
   
Google Books
Historical Traveler’s Guide to Florida
By Eliot Kleinberg
Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press
2006
Pg. 110:
This was Edward Bok’s idea. And despite the overwhelming growth of surrounding Central Florida, the process still works. “Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it,” reads a marker. Bok said it often; it was one of his grandmother’s favorite phrases.
 
Google Books
Trivia
By Juan Silverio
Xlibris Corporation (Xlibris.com)
2010
Pg. 90:
As a child he was told by his mother: “Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it”.