Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent.
Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.
No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.
Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same.
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.
It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
When real nobleness accompanies that imaginary one of birth, the imaginary seems to mix with real, and becomes real too.
I've got German, Cornish and Scottish ancestry. It might help explain my affinity for forests, the sea, and fatty foods.
A Nation... is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry, and a common dislike of their neighbors
It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one.
For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions that Irish-Americans.
In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it's almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes you white.
Any nobody from the folk blues world could avoid being influenced by Woody Guthrie, who is actually of Scottish-Irish ancestry.
There is no more fascinating subject in which a person may become occupied than an examination into the history of his ancestry.
'Cullum' is Scottish, but I'm nowhere near Scottish. My mother is Burmese, and my father is of German, Jewish, English ancestry.
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.
I see myself as part English and part American, with a dash of Irish thrown in, and a pinch of Italian from my mother's ancestry.
My family is Abenaki Indian on my mother's side. My father's side of the family is Slovak, and we also have some English 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.
I do have a muse. I am not sure how to describe her. She can be very elusive. She was born in England but has Mediterranean ancestry.
Like Barack Obama's father, Trump's mother was an immigrant. But Trump doesn't often bring up his Scottish ancestry on the campaign trail.
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.
The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment.
I'm crazy about Dublin. If you went back 3,000 years in my ancestry you wouldn't find a drop of Irish blood in the veins, but I love the place.
Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.
Knowing that my ancestry had all been quite wealthy and owned their own businesses probably left me with the ambition to replicate what they'd done.
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.
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.
While researching my ancestry I have unearthed many skeletons. It would seem that I come from a long line of ne'er-do-wells, especially on my mother's side.
My ancestry is really weird, because my great grandfather was from the Cayman Islands, and then his father was from England. But I lose track at that point.
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?
I'm so proud of my Chinese ancestry, but I was born and raised in America, and I really believe in American values, our American system, our freedom, our liberties.
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.
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.
The secret to a long-lasting relationship is perpetually imagining the worst. It's a world view tracing back to my Eastern European ancestry and one I draw upon regularly.
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.
I knew my mother was - well, her ancestry dated back to John Quincy Adams, so she was totally not Latina. She was definitely whatever you call it - white bread, shall we say?
High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.
It turns out that every person alive today can trace his or her ancestry back to Africa. Everyone's DNA tells a story of a journey from an African homeland to wherever you live.
Women are outperforming men in almost every sphere of life in our society and the women of East Indian ancestry are no exception to this rule. They have broken the cultural mould.
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.
I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.
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.
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.
Descendants of New England pioneers are proud of their ancestry and glad to proclaim the fact that so far as the United States are concerned, New England is in deed the cradle of religious liberty.
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?
Many people believe that determining who is 'black' is rather easy, a task simplified by the administration of the one-drop rule. Under the one-drop rule, any discernible African ancestry stamps a person as 'black.'
The Trail of Tears has a great deal of meaning for every person of American Indian ancestry, whether they are Cherokee or not. For me, it has always stood for what is best and worst about the history of the United States.
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.
Some people will deny anything that displeases or scares them: unusual pain in their chests, unwanted lumps beneath their skin, or the fact that humans share ancestry with apes are a few examples. Another is climate change.