Ancestry Quotes

• There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

  Helen Keller

  Life, Kings, Diversity

  Helen Keller (2012). “The Story of My Life”, p.5, Courier Corporation

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• Heredity is nothing but stored environment.

  Luther Burbank

  Heredity And Environment, Definitions, Ancestor

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• Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Xenophobia, Patriotic, Usa

  Remarks before Daughters of the American Revolution Convention, Washington, D.C., 21 Apr. 1938. Often paraphrased as Roosevelt's addressing the DAR as "my fellow immigrants."

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• The precise form of an individual's activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Life, Success, World

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

  Seneca the Younger

  Descent, Brag, Boast

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• 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.

  Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

  Long, Lines, Glory

  52 Copy quote

• When real nobleness accompanies that imaginary one of birth, the imaginary seems to mix with real, and becomes real too.

  Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

  Real, Birth, Imaginary

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• 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.

  John Frederick Boyes

  Two, Ciphers, Talent

  John Frederick Boyes (1859). “Life and Books: Or, Records of Thought and Reading”, p.58

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• 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.

  Hosea Ballou

  Book, Names, Descent

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

  Clarence Day

  Eggs, Birth, Source

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• We are very fond of some families because they can be traced beyond the Conquest, whereas indeed the farther back, the worse, as being the nearer allied to a race of robbers and thieves.

  Daniel Defoe

  Race, Thieves, Conquest

  Daniel Defoe (1843). “The works of Daniel De Foe [ed.] by W. Hazlitt”

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• I have no urns, no dusty monuments;
  No broken images of ancestors,
  Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales
  Of long descents, to boast false honors from.

  Ben Jonson

  Long, Broken, Honor

  Ben Jonson, Felix Emmanuel Schelling (1966). “The Complete Plays: The alchemist. Catline, his conspiracy. Bartholomew Fair. The devil is an ass. The staple of news. The new inn; or, The light heart. The magnetic lady; or, Humours reconciled. A tale of a tub. The sad shepard; or, A tale of Robin Hood. The case is altered. Glossary”

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

  Ovid

  Pedigree

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• What is birth to a man if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such an offspring?

  Philip Sidney

  Men, Birth, Stains

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.3

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• Being well satisfied that, for a man who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to hold himself up as honored, not on his own account, but for the sake of his forefathers. Yet hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants.

  Plato

  Men, Thinking, Honor

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• The pride of ancestry is a superstructure of the most imposing height, but resting on the most flimsy foundation. It is ridiculous enough to observe the hauteur with which the old nobility look down on the new. The reason of this puzzled me a little, until I began to reflect that most titles are respectable only because they are old; if new, they would be despised, because all those who now admire the grandeur of the stream would see nothing but the impurity of the source.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Pride, Foundation, Titles

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”

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• 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.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Pride, Proud, Individual

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”

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• 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.

  Joseph Addison

  Honor, Titles, Merit

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1819). “The Spectator”, p.21

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• I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate.

  James Gates Percival

  Father, Mean, Fool

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• He that boasts of his ancestors confesses that he has no virtue of his own. No person ever lived for our honor; nor ought that to be reputed ours, which was long before we had a being; for what advantage can it be to a blind man to know that his parents had good eyes? Does he see one whit the better?

  Pierre Charron

  Eye, Men, Long

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• 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.

  Pierre Charron

  Blood, Vapor, Mouths

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• Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Helping Others, Roots, People

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

  Maxine Hong Kingston

  Hurt, People, Comfort

  Maxine Hong Kingston (2014). “The Woman Warrior: Picador Classic”, p.17, Pan Macmillan

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• Pride of origin, whether high or low, springs from the same principle in human nature; one is but the positive, the other the negative, pole of a single weakness.

  James Russell Lowell

  Spring, Pride, Weakness

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.1818, Delphi Classics

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• I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Motivational, Fathers Day, Future

  Abraham Lincoln (1982). “Abraham Lincoln, wisdom & wit”, Peter Pauper Pr

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