There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.
In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, - seven or eight ancestors at least, and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.
It is worthwhile for anyone to have behind him a few generations of honest, hard-working ancestry.
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.
Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.
Heredity is nothing but stored environment.
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.
Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
There's so many people who move around our country and lose track of their own ancestry. It's nice to know where you come from.
People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.
Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.
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.
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.
Of what use are pedigrees, or to be thought of noble blood, or the display of family portraits, O Ponticus?
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
A mule has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.
Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea
Character is better than ancestry, and personal conduct is more important than the highest parentage.
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.
Few sons attain the praise Of their great sires and most their sires disgrace.
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.
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.
Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.
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