ANCESTORS QUOTES III

quotations about ancestry & ancestors

One always retains the traces of one's origin.

ERNEST RENAN

La Vie de Jésus


Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine;
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.

ALFRED TENNYSON

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After


Each of us is entitled to claim the forebears who suit him, who explain him in his own eyes. How often have I not changed ancestors!

EMIL M. CIORAN

Drawn and Quartered


He who boasts of his descent praises the deeds of another.

SENECA

Hercules Furens


Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.

TAD WILLIAMS

Shadowrise


Now, when lesser folk would wither, thou must be true to the blood of thine ancestors. Much greatness is bred in thee; accept now this terrible mantle and take a step nearer thy destiny.

ROBIN JARVIS

The Oaken Throne


Somehow I've always had a sort of sneakin'
Idee that peddygrees is purty much
Like monkeys' tails--so long they're apt to weaken
The yap that drags 'em round.

ROBERTUS LOVE

The Boy from Hodgensville


People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

EDMUND BURKE

Reflections on the Revolution in France


It's the land of my ancestors. I need to set my feet on that soil and see how I feel.

RUTH BEHAR

Lucky Broken Girl


Our ancestors are very good king of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

The Rivals


No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.

L.M. MONTGOMERY

Emily Climbs


The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.

EMILY DICKINSON

Poems


We carry our dead with us like helium balloons. There is no breaking the umbilicus.

TANYA TAGAQ

Split Tooth


All blood is alike ancient.

THOMAS FULLER

Gnomologia


You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors.

TOBA BETA

My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut


The stream is brightest at its spring,
And blood is not like wine;
Nor honored less than he who heirs
Is he who founds a line.

J.G. WHITTIER

Amy Wentworth


A plaited link exists between every person and his or her ancestors, not simply through genealogical records, but in the same manner that the soul of a child, from which we sprang from, traces a direct connection to the matured soul of the adult.

KILROY J. OLDSTER

Dead Toad Scrolls


Ancestral glory is, as it were, a lamp to posterity.

SALLUST

Jugurtha