quotations about ancestry & ancestors
You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors.
TOBA BETA
My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
All blood is alike ancient.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
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
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
Ancestral glory is, as it were, a lamp to posterity.
SALLUST
Jugurtha
Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave has had kings among his ancestors.
PLATO
Theaetetus
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
Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors.
NORMAN DOIDGE
The Brain that Changes Itself
Who, fond of pedigree, derive
From the most noted whore alive.
MATTHEW GREEN
The Spleen
No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.
L.M. MONTGOMERY
Emily Climbs
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
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
Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.
TAD WILLIAMS
Shadowrise
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
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
Scions of old families who've hit the skids do like to flaunt their illustrious ancestors.
CHARLOTTE MACLEOD
The Corpse in Oozak's Pond
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