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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• 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

  3 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

  3 Copy quote

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

  Saadi

  Pride, Virtue, Thyself

  33 Copy quote

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

  Clarence Day

  Eggs, Birth, Source

  3 Copy quote

• Few sons attain the praise Of their great sires and most their sires disgrace.

  Homer

  Son, Childhood, Praise

  Homer (1872). “The Iliad ...”, p.326

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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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• They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.

  James Russell Lowell

  Thinking, Blood, Mountain

  James Russell Lowell (1896). “The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell”

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• I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Facts, Descent, Ancestor

  W. S. Gilbert, Ian C. Bradley (2016). “The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan”, p.637, Oxford University Press

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

  John Phillips

  Hard Work, Generations, Honest

  4 Copy quote

• Character is better than ancestry, and personal conduct is more important than the highest parentage.

  Thomas John Barnardo

  Christian, Character, Important

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• And, you know, the fact is, if you believe in evolution, we all have a common ancestor, and we all have a common ancestry with the plant in the lobby. This is what evolution tells us. And, it's true. It's kind of unbelievable.

  Jeff Hawkins

  Believe, Facts, Common

  3 Copy quote

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

  Mick Taylor

  Ideas, Roots, Enough

  3 Copy quote

• Some men by ancestry are only the shadow of a mighty name.

  Lucan

  Men, Names, Shadow

  3 Copy quote

• In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.

  Jonathan Swift

  Jobs, Cutting, Should Have

  'Verses on the Upright Judge'

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• When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.

  Alex Haley

  Family, Talking, Alex

  "Race: Haley's Rx: Talk, Write, Reunite" in TIME magazine, February 14, 1977.

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• Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.

  Harlan F. Stone

  Equality, People, Doctrine

  Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, (100), 1943.

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• We are all creatures of our ancestry! There is no right and wrong, objectively.

  Piers Anthony

  Creatures

  Piers Anthony (2014). “Phthor”, p.49, Open Road Media

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• 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.

  Edmund Burke

  Interesting, Weakness, Wealth

  Edmund Burke (1912). “Reflections on the French Revolution”, p.51, CUP Archive

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

  Edmund Burke

  Unjust, Birth, Preference

  "Reflections on the Revolution in France". Political pamphlet by Edmund Burke, November 1790.

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• Of what use are pedigrees, or to be thought of noble blood, or the display of family portraits, O Ponticus?

  Juvenal

  Blood, Portraits, Noble

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 23-25, Satires, VIII, line 1, 1922.

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• Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own.

  Ovid

  Birth

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

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  House, Ancient, Masters

  "De Officiis". Treatise by Marcus Tullius Cicero, CXXXIX, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 23-25, 44 B.C..

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• The brave are born from the brave and good. In steers and in horses is to be found the excellence of their sire; nor do savage eagles produce a peaceful dove.

  Horace

  Horse, Eagles, Brave

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote