quotations about ancestry & ancestors
He's a chip o' the old block.
WILLIAM ROWLEY
A Match at Midnight
One always retains the traces of one's origin.
ERNEST RENAN
La Vie de Jésus
It is not out of the flesh that is bred in the bone.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
PLUTARCH
On the Training of Children
We carry our dead with us like helium balloons. There is no breaking the umbilicus.
TANYA TAGAQ
Split Tooth
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
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
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
Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors.
NORMAN DOIDGE
The Brain that Changes Itself
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
Who, fond of pedigree, derive
From the most noted whore alive.
MATTHEW GREEN
The Spleen
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
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
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
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
Forge your path. Crack your ancestors wide open. By any means necessary, unearth your roots.
GABBY RIVERA
America #7
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
Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave has had kings among his ancestors.
PLATO
Theaetetus