After a decades-long fight with Parkinson’s disease, legendary heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali died Friday night at the age of 74.
Fans knew and loved him for his cocky and colorful pre-fight rhymes. But Ali used his gift for language in other ways too, including to discuss his preferred legacy.
When asked what he’d like people to think about him when he’d gone in a 1972 interview with English personality David Frost, Ali gave his heartwarming “recipe for life” as an answer.
In the clip, Ali says:
I would like for them to say, he took a few cups of love. He took one tablespoon of patience, one tablespoon of generosity, one pint of kindness; he took one quart of laughter, one piece of concern, and then he mixed willingness with happiness. He added lots of faith, and he stirred it up well. Then he spread it and expanded it over a lifetime. And he served each and every deserving person he met.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling also tweeted another one of Ali’s responses in the early hours of Saturday morning
Unsurprisingly, he said it best himself. #MuhammedAlipic.twitter.com/G1BykvvzfF
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 4, 2016