quotations about ancestry & ancestors
When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves ... sometimes even physically.
RAQUEL CEPEDA
Bird of Paradise
Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own.
OVID
Metamorphoses
The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors is like a potato--the only good belonging to him is underground.
THOMAS OVERBURY
Characters
You should study the Peerage, Gerald.... It is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.
OSCAR WILDE
A Woman of No Importance
How shall a man escape from his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or his mother's life? It often appears in a family, as if all the qualities of the progenitors were potted in several jars--some ruling quality in each son or daughter of the house--and sometimes the unmixed temperament, the rank unmitigated elixir, the family vice, is drawn off in a separate individual, and the others are proportionally relieved.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Conduct of Life
Do as your great progenitors have done,
And, by their virtues, prove yourself their son.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Wife of Bath
This energy feels like a pull from the ancestors, helping me to find my own way, to transcend my own fears.
LYNDA NGUYEN
Freedom and Feminism
We are just stars in our family's constellation.
STEPHEN ROBERT KUTA
Life in Monochrome
And when, at last, .... I stood in London with ten pounds in my hand--five of which I promptly lost--the ancestors dwelling in my blood who, all my life, had summoned me with insistent eldritch voices, murmured together, like contented cats.
P.L. TRAVERS
What the Bee Knows
'Tis a high virtue to tread in the steps of our ancestors, when they have gone before us in the right path.
PLINY THE YOUNGER
Epistles
A hall full of smoke-begrimed busts do not make a nobleman.
SENECA
Epistulae ad Lucilium
Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.
R.L. STEVENSON
Memories and Portraits
Sorry pre-eminence of high descent,
Above the vulgar born, to rot in state!
ROBERT BLAIR
The Grave
When we respect our blood ancestors and our spiritual ancestors, we feel rooted.
THICH NHAT HANH
Living Buddha, Living Christ
Nor do fierce eagles produce the peaceful dove.
HORACE
Odes
The conviction reigns that it is only through the sacrifices and accomplishments of the ancestors that the tribe exists--and that one has to pay them back with sacrifices and accomplishments; one thus recognizes a debt that constantly grows greater, since these forebears never cease, in their continued existence as powerful spirits, to accord the tribe new advantages and new strength.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
On the Genealogy of Morals
Such is the stock from which I spring.
PLAUTUS
Pseudolus
No matter who our ancestors are, our own personal and monumental task is to become the best person that we can possibly be--someone in whom our own descendants in times to come can take great pride and find inspiration.
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
Digging for Ancestral Gold
We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.
LIAM CALLANAN
The Cloud Atlas
Nothing like blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, and men.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Vanity Fair