Ancestors

"Teach them about the detestable things that their ancestors did. ... Abandon your detestable practices. You are not to defile yourselves with Egypt's idols. ... You are not to follow the statutes of your ancestors, observe their ordinances, or be defiled by their idols. I am the LORD your God."

"All of them, my ancestors,/blood of my blood,/flame of my flame,/dead and living mixed together,/sad, grotesque, immense./They trample through me as through a dark house./Trampling with prayers, and curses, and wailing,/rattling my heart like a copper bell,/my tongue quivers,/I don't know my own voice-/My ancestors speak."

"That is the nature of our ancestors: immensely courageous hunters, defenders, shepherds, voyagers, inventors, warriors, and founders of cities and states. That is the father you could rescue; the ancestor you could become."

"The wisdom of our ancestors."

"I am a gentleman, though spoiled i' the breeding. The Buzzards are all gentlemen. We came in with the Conqueror."

"I look upon you as a gem of the old rock."

"People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors."

"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 the 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."

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

"A degenerate nobleman, or one that is proud of his birth, is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground."

"Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred."

"Odiosum est enim, cum a prætereuntibus dicatur:—O domus antiqua, heu, quam dispari dominare domino."

"I came up-stairs into the world; for I was born in a cellar."

"D'Adam nous sommes tous enfants, La prouve en est connue, Et que tous, nos premier parents Ont mené la charrue. Mais, las de cultiver enfin La terre labourée, L'une a dételé le matin, L'autre l'après-dinée."

"Great families of yesterday we show, And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who."

"Born in a Cellar, * * * and living in a Garret."

"Primus Adam duro cum verteret arva ligone, Pensaque de vili deceret Eva colo: Ecquis in hoc poterat vir nobilis orbe videri? Et modo quisquam alios ante locandus erir?"

"No, my friends, I go (always other things being equal) for the man that inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations."

"Few sons attain the praise of their great sires, and most their sires disgrace."

"Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis; Est in juvencis, est in equibus patrum Virtus; nec imbellem feroces Progenerant aquilæ columbam."

"My nobility," said he, "begins in me, but yours ends in you."

"Ah, ma foi, je n'en sais rien; moi je suis mon ancetre."

"Stemmata quid faciunt, quid prodest, Pontice, longo, Sanguine censeri pictosque ostendere vultus."

"Sence I've ben here, I've hired a chap to look about for me To git me a transplantable an' thrifty fem'ly-tree."

"Sire, I am my own Rudolph of Hapsburg. (Rudolph was the founder of the Hapsburg family)."

"The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors is like a potato,—the only good belonging to him is under ground."

"Nam genus et proavos et quæ non fecimus ipsi Vix ea nostra voco."

"What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards."

"If there be no nobility of descent, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent,—a character in them that bear rule so fine and high and pure that as men come within the circle of its influence they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction,—the royalty of virtue."

"That all from Adam first begun, None but ungodly Woolston doubts, And that his son, and his son's sons Were all but ploughmen, clowns and louts. Each when his rustic pains began, To merit pleaded equal right, 'Twas only who left off at noon, Or who went on to work till night."

"On garde toujours la marque de ses origines."

"Majorum gloria posteris lumen est, neque bona neque mala in occulto patitur."

"Stemma non inspicit. Omnes, si ad primam originem revocentur, a Diis sunt."

"Qui genus jactat suum Aliena laudat."

"Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with."

"I make little account of genealogical trees. Mere family never made a man great. Thought and deed, not pedigree, are the passports to enduring fate."

"The Smiths never had any arms, and have invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs."

"Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal."

"'Tis happy for him that his father was born before him."

"From yon blue heavens above us bent, The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood."

"He seems to be a man sprung from himself."

"As though there were a tie, And obligation to posterity! We get them, bear them, breed and nurse. What has posterity done for us, That we, lest they their rights should lose, Should trust our necks to grip of noose?"

"Bishop Warburton is reported to have said that high birth was a thing which he never knew any one disparage except those who had it not, and he never knew any one make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of."

"Rank is a farce: if people Fools will be A Scavenger and King's the same to me."

"He stands for fame on his forefather's feet, By heraldry, proved valiant or discreet!"

"They that on glorious ancestors enlarge, Produce their debt, instead of their discharge."

"Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years Have disinherited his future hours, Which starve on orts, and glean their former field."

"My tutor I have already mentioned, Marcus Porcius Cato who was, in his own estimation at least, a living embodiment of that ancient Roman virtue which his ancestors had one after the other shown. He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about."