Quotes About Ancestry

No action in the present is an action planned with a view of its effect on the future. When the future, bearing its own events, arrives, its ancestry is then traced in a trancelike retrospect, at the end of which, their mouths and eyes wide with their astonishment, the people in a small place reveal themselves to be like children being shown the secrets of a magic trick.

Mortmain is an old French word that should be tattooed on the inside of any historical novelist's skull. This wonderful and terrible word means "dead hand." Its definition is: "The influence of the past regarded as controlling the present." (It is also used as a legal term with the same basic meaning.

Every Mexican was a diluted Indian, invaded by milk like the coffee in Cayetana's cup.

Sradica l'albero genealogico dell'avversario con la forza del turpiloquio.

I can't imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.

Divine blood flows differently in each god-born child.

What makes a witch, then? If it is not divinity?' 'I do not know for certain,' I said. 'I once thought it was passed through blood, but Telegonus has no spells in him. I have come to believe it is mostly will.' She nodded. I did not have to explain. We knew what will was.

Why should he be peaceful? I never was, nor his father either, when I knew him. The difference was that he was not afraid to be burnt.

Frodo could not be a hero unless he was born into a story with many chapters already played out before his own. His moment derives its weight and urgency from the moments that have come before.

Oscar Handlin has said, "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history. In the same sense we cannot really speak of a particular immigrant contribution to America, because All Americans have been immigrants or the decedents of immigrants, even the Indians as mentioned before, migrated to the American continent. We can only speak of people whose roots in America are older or newer.

Of course, I was not yet born when my mother told her parents she was pregnant

Everyone has a history, Jack.

he started out with relatively little. He was born into the family of a respectable but forgettable Roman senator in 63 B.C.E.

All blue-eyed people are mutants. The first ones appeared as recently as 5,000 years ago.

everyone alive on the planet today is related both to Confucius (551–479 BC) and to Nefertiti (1370–1330 BC). So

I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing.

For some reason, humans have this funny thing about where we came from - it always has far more emotional weight than where we are.

We must strive to become good ancestors.

Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave had kings among his ancestors.

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.

Any living cell carries with it the experience of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors.

I had an experience that probably is shared by many parents. When my daughter was born, I felt viscerally connected to generations before and after me in a way that took me by surprise.

Remember who you are and whose you are.

No matter how high up you get, never forget where you came from.