ANCESTRY

Related Subjects: Antiquity, Birth, Breeding, Family, Gentlemen, Heredity, Nobility, Posterity

1. He is not from Virginia, we never knew his grandfather.—STEPHEN VINCENT BENET, John Brown's Body

2. So that the branch a goodly verdure flings,
   I reck not if an acorn gave it birth.—BYRON, Don Juan

3. The pride of ancestry increases in the ratio of distance.—G. W. CURTIS, Prue and I

4. It is not observed in history that families improve with time. It is rather discovered that the whole matter is like a comet, of which the brightest part is the head; and the tail, although long and luminous, is gradually shaded into obscurity.—G. W. CURTIS, Prue and I

5. What! You say a horse is noble because it is good in itself, and the same you say of a falcon or a pearl; but a man shall be called noble because his ancestors were so? Not with words, but with knives must one answer such a beastly notion.—DANTE

6. Noblesse oblige. (Birth compels it. Nobility constrains us. Noble birth imposes the obligation of noble actions.)—DUC DE LEVIS, Maxims

7. And seldom three descents continue good.—DRYDEN, The Wife of Bath

8. No distinction so little excites envy as that which is derived from ancestors by a long descent.—FENELON, Telemachus

9. 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, The Mikado 

10. Spurn not the nobly born with love affected!
    Nor treat with virtuous scorn the well-connected!—W. S. GILBERT, Iolanthe

11. The fairest flower
    That ever blossomed on ancestral timber.—W. S. GILBERT, H. M. S. Pinafore

12. Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.—THOMAS GRAY, Elegy in a Country Churchyard

13. Once in every half-century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors.—HAWTHORNE, The House of the Seven Gables

14. The Jukes were an old family, too.—LILLIAN HELLMAN, The Children's Hour

15. How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a God.—WASHINGTON IRVING, Knickerbocker's History of New York

16. Nor stand so much on your gentility,
    Which is an airy, and mere borrowed thing,
    From dead men's dust, and bones, and none of yours,
    Except you make, or hold it.—BEN JONSON, Every Man in His Humour

17. I am my own ancestor.—MARSHAL JUNOT

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

19. I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast
    of ancestors. I would rather start a family than finish one.—DON MARQUIS, a roach of the taverns

20. Out of one man a race
    Of men innumerable.—MILTON, Paradise Lost

21. A penniless lass wi' a lang pedigree.—CAROLINE OLIPHANT, The Laird o' Cock pen

22. The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors is like a potato—the only good belonging to him is underground.—SIR THOMAS OVERBURY

23. Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave has had kings among his ancestors.—PLATO, Thaestetus

24. It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory be­longs to our ancestors.—PLUTARCH, Lives

25. To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates (a shoemaker's son) for his mean birth, "My nobility," said he, "begins with me, but yours ends in you.—PLUTARCH, Lives

26. The younger brother is the ancienter gentleman.—Proverb

27. So yourself be good, a fig for your grandfather.—Proverb

28. He that boasteth of his ancestors, confesseth he hath no virtue of his own.—Proverb

29. From our ancestors come our names; but from our virtues our honours.—Proverb

30. Gentility without ability is worse than plain beggary.—Proverb

31. As long as a Welsh pedigree.—Proverb

32. Depend upon it, my snobbish friend,
    Your family thread you can't ascend,
    Without good reason to apprehend
    You may find it waxed at the farther end
    By some plebeian vocation;
    Or, worse than that, your boasted Line
    May end in a loop of stronger twine,
    That plagued some worthy relation!—J. G. SAXE, The Proud Miss MacBride

33. We have all had the same num­ber of forefathers.—SENECA, Epistulae ad Lucilium

34. Look in the chronicles; we came in with Richard Conqueror.—SHAKESPEARE, The Taming of the Shrew

35. The Smiths never had any arms, and have invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs.—SYDNEY SMITH, Lady Holland's Memoir

36. Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.—STEVENSON, Memories and Portraits

37. A pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge.—THACKERAY, The Rose and the Ring

38. Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.—VOLTAIRE

39. They that on glorious ancestors enlarge
    Produce their debt instead of their discharge.—EDWARD YOUNG, Love of Fame