quotations about ancestry & ancestors
Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.
TAD WILLIAMS
Shadowrise
Our ancestors lived for us; they died for us; and they dreamed for us. Through their collective imaginings, we were all brought into being. What an incredible honor it is for us to carry their life forward through our own.
SHERRI MITCHELL
Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
Ancestral glory is, as it were, a lamp to posterity.
SALLUST
Jugurtha
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
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
Breathing in, I see all my ancestors in me: my mineral ancestors, plant ancestors, mammal ancestors, and human ancestors. My ancestors are always present, alive in every cell of my body, and I play a part in their immortality.
THICH NHAT HANH
The Art of Living
We carry our dead with us like helium balloons. There is no breaking the umbilicus.
TANYA TAGAQ
Split Tooth
The fairest flower
That ever blossomed on ancestral timber.
W.S. GILBERT
Ruddigore
You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors.
TOBA BETA
My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
One always retains the traces of one's origin.
ERNEST RENAN
La Vie de Jésus
He who boasts of his descent praises the deeds of another.
SENECA
Hercules Furens
Frankly, our ancestors don't seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars, the broken planet. Clearly, they didn't care about what would happen to the people who came after them.
SUZANNE COLLINS
Mockingjay
We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching.
PAUL TSONGAS
National Journal, 1991
All blood is alike ancient.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry; and he that is not industrious envieth him that is. Besides, noble persons cannot go much higher; and he that standeth at a stay when others rise can hardly avoid motions of envy.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
If there be any good in nobility, I trow it to be only this, that it imposeth a necessity upon those who are noble, that they should not suffer their nobility to degenerate from the virtues of their ancestors.
BOETHIUS
De Consolatione Philosophiae
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