x
I don’t have to look up my family tree, because I know that I’m the sap.
Ancestry
Allen, Fred A.
1894-1957 American Radio Comic
Genealogy. An account of one’s descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ancestry
Bierce, Ambrose
1842-1914 American Author Editor Journalist The Devil’s Dictionary
If your descent is from heroic sires, show in your life a remnant of their fires.
Ancestry
Boileau, Nicholas
1636-1711 French Literary Poet Critic
Nothing is so soothing to our self esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.
Ancestry
Brooks, Van Wyck
Heredity is nothing, but stored environment.
Ancestry
Burbank, Luther
1849-1926 American Horticulturist
The scholar without good breeding is a nitpicker; the philosopher a cynic; the soldier a brute and everyone else disagreeable.
Ancestry
Chesterfield, Lord
1694-1773 British Statesman Author
Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.
Ancestry
Chesterfield, Lord
1694-1773 British Statesman Author
Breed is stronger than pasture.
Ancestry
Eliot, George
1819-1880 British Novelist
Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
Ancestry
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
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.
Ancestry
Gilbert, W. S.
1836-1911 British Librettist
Is anyone simply by birth to be applauded or punished?
Ancestry
Hitopadesa
600-1100 AD Sanskrit Fable From Panchatantra
Stillness and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. Vulgar persons can’t sit still, or at least must always work their limbs and features.
Ancestry
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
1809-1894 American Author Wit Poet
Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.
Ancestry
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
1809-1894 American Author Wit Poet
None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married.
Ancestry
Howe, Edgar Watson
1853-1937 American Journalist Author
I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
Ancestry
Lincoln, Abraham
1809-1865 Sixteenth President of the USA
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.
Ancestry
Louis, Henry
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.
Ancestry
Lowell, James Russell
1819-1891 American Poet Critic Editor
High birth is an accident, not a virtue.
Ancestry
Metastasio, Pietro
1698-1782 Italian Poet
We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.
Ancestry
Oates, Joyce Carol
1938 American Author
The person who has nothing to brag about but their ancestors is like a potato; the best part of them is underground.
Ancestry
Overbore, Sir Thomas
The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.
Ancestry
Ovid
BC 43-18 AD Roman Poet
Hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendants.
Ancestry
Plato
BC 427-347 Greek Philosopher
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
Ancestry
Plutarch
46-120 AD Greek Essayist Biographer
From our ancestors come our names from our virtues our honor.
Ancestry
Proverb
Unworthy offspring brag the most about their worthy descendants.
Ancestry
Proverb, Danish
Sayings of Danish Origin
Mules are always boasting that their ancestors were horses.
Ancestry
Proverb, German
Sayings of German Origin
Clever father, clever daughter; clever mother, clever son.
Ancestry
Proverb, Russian
Sayings of Russian Origin
There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.
Ancestry
Reade, W. Winwood
1838-1875 American Writer
My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet the boat.
Ancestry
Rogers, Will
1879-1935 American Humorist Actor
Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrations and revolutionists.
Ancestry
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
1882-1945 Thirty-second President of the USA
Those who boast of their decent, brag on what they owe to others.
Ancestry
Seneca
4 BC � 65 AD Spanish-born Roman Statesman philosopher
No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.
Ancestry
Seneca
4 BC � 65 AD Spanish-born Roman Statesman philosopher
He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.
Ancestry
Seneca
4 BC � 65 AD Spanish-born Roman Statesman philosopher
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
Ancestry
Shaw, George Bernard
1856-1950 Irish-born British Dramatist
Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.
Ancestry
Stevenson, Robert Louis
1850-1895 Scottish Essayist Poet Novelist
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.
Ancestry
Swift, Jonathan
1667-1745 Anglo-Irish Satirist
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Ancestry
Twain, Mark
1835-1910 American Humorist Writer
The kind of ancestors we have had is not as important as the kind of descendants our ancestors have.
Ancestry
Unknown, Source
Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
Ancestry
Voltaire
1694-1778 French Historian Writer