Best 137 quotes in «ancestry quotes» category

If the means were available, we could trace our ancestry - yours and mine - back to the first blob of life-like material that came into being on the planet.

If your descent is from heroic sires, Show in your life a remnant of their fires.

In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied; but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.

I get anxious. That lovely Jewish guilt that comes with ancestry.

I grew up in North Devon, by the sea, and feel a special affinity for the landscape there, despite a lack of actual ancestry.

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.

It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry.

It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry.

It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.

It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one.

It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.

It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back to so many different parts of the earth and to conditions of such diverse kinds, the variations of text are so entirely questions of detail, not of essential substance.

It is worthwhile for anyone to have behind him a few generations of honest, hard-working ancestry.

It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.

Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea

I've never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they're not going to be great writers.

Pedigree and ancestry and what we ourselves have not achieved, I scarcely recognize as our own.

My forefathers didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.

No man is nobler born than another, unless he is born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition. They who make such a parade with their family pictures and pedigrees, are, properly speaking, rather to be called noted or notorious than noble persons. I thought it right to say this much, in order to repel the insolence of men who depend entirely upon chance and accidental circumstances for distinction, and not at all on public services and personal merit.

No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.

My life shall be free and broad and great, and I will not be the slave to the sense delights which chained my ancient ancestry. I reject the heritage. I break the entail. And who are you to say I am unwise?

Nobility of birth is like a cipher; it has no power in itself, like wealth or talent; but, it tells with all the power of a cipher when added to either of the other two.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.

Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent.

So what we can answer [as geneticists] is questions about biology, about biological ancestry. But to make any sense of that historically we have to contextualize it - the archaeology, the linguistic pattern, even the climatology.

People who can comfort the dead can also chase after them to hurt them further-a reverse ancestor worship.

Pride thyself on what virtue thou hast, and not on thy parentage.

Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.

The original mixed ancestry of the Jews and their subsequent history of intermixture with every people among whom they have lived and continue to live.

The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment.

The origin of all mankind was the same; it is only a clear and good conscience that makes a man noble, for that is derived from heaven itself.

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.

The big picture, I think, is that common ancestry is evidentially prior to natural selection in Darwin's theory and in contemporary evolutionary biology as well.

The egg it is the source of all To everyone's ancestral hall.

The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity. [Lat., Majorum gloria posteris lumen est, neque bona neque mala in occulto patitur.]

The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato. The best part is underground.

The Pride of ancestry increases in the ratio of distance.

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.

There are many kinds of conceit, but the chief one is to let people know what a very ancient and gifted family one descends from.

The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.

There is no more fascinating subject in which a person may become occupied than an examination into the history of his ancestry.

There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months.

The theory of evolution explains to us what our ancestry has been. It does not explain away our worth. Why should we be afraid to learn more about what we are?

The theater, when it is potent enough to deserve its ancestry, is always dangerous; that is why it is instinctively feared by people who do not want change, but only preservation of the status quo.

Though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a lowborn meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident.

Those who have nothing else to recommend them to the respect of others but only their blood, cry it up at a great rate, and have their mouth perpetually full of it. They swell and vapor, and you are sure to hear of their families and relations every third word.

Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.

Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.