"Forward to a new age", or basically that I should always be looking forward to create a new future for myself. The past may be something to mind and remember, but ultimately I need to stick to a forward course rather than falling back into brooding about bad things that have happened. I prefer this as a personal motto, because it implies that I am getting over things that occured a long time ago in order to create something new and wonderful.
"Vengeance and Empire" has a longer history with me, and a very notorious one at that. It is not really a "motto", but a cause that I have too often tended to follow. As it implies, it means that my actions are defined by desires to avenge myself on the world for past events and to build something mighty that cannot be overlooked or forgotten. As may be expected, this has led to towards more than a few actions that could be considered extreme, because the root of this phrase is selfish and unrestrained ambition, pure and simple.
So, I guess the first one is a motto while the second is more along the lines of probing into my motivations for a large amount of my actions.
