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 (1836–1911) English Dramatist, Librettist, Poet, Illustrator
It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good.—They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English Dramatist, Poet, Actor
Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.
—Joyce Carol Oates (b.1938) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Playwright, Poet, Literary Critic
Breed is stronger than pasture.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
A grandfather is no longer a social institution.—Men do not live in the past.—They merely look back.—Forward is the universal cry.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Heredity is nothing, but stored environment.
—Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American Botanist, Scientist
They who depend on the merits of ancestors, search in the roots of the tree for the fruits which the branches ought to produce.
—Isaac Barrow
We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights they have delivered to our care. We owe it to our posterity not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed.
—Junius Unidentified English Writer
Every man is his own ancestor, and every man is his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past.
—Frederic Henry Hedge
Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Unworthy offspring brag the most about their worthy descendants.
—Danish Proverb
It is indeed desirable to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
If your descent is from heroic sires, show in your life a remnant of their fires.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (1636–1711) French Poet, Satirist, Literary Critic
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good-breeding. Vulgar persons can’t sit still, or, at least, they must work their limbs or features.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
Good blood—descent from the great and good, is a high honor and privilege.—He that lives worthily of it is deserving of the highest esteem; he that does not, of the deeper disgrace.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Consider whether we ought not to be more in the habit of seeking honor from our descendants than from our ancestors; thinking it better to be nobly remembered than nobly born; and striving so to live, that our sons, and our sons’ sons, for ages to come, might still lead their children reverently to the doors out of which we had been carried to the grave, saying, “Look, this was his house, this was his chamber.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
The origin of all mankind was the same: it is only a clear and a good conscience that makes a man noble, for that is derived from heaven itself.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Honorable descent is, in all nations, greatly esteemed. It is to be expected that the children of men of worth will be like their progenitors; for nobility is the virtue of a family.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
The pride of blood has a most important and beneficial influence.—It is much to feel that the high and honorable belong to a name that is pledged to the present by the recollections of the past.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38) English Poet, Novelist
I don’t have to look up my family tree, because I know that I’m the sap.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
What can we see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier?
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
Genealogy: An account of one’s descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
From our ancestors come our names from our virtues our honor.
—Common Proverb
When real nobleness accompanies the imaginary one of birth, the imaginary mixes with the real and becomes real too.
—George Greville, 2nd Earl of Warwick (1746–1816) British Nobleman, Politician
The kind of ancestors we have had is not as important as the kind of descendants our ancestors have.
—Unknown
He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
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.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
He that can only boast of a distinguished lineage, boasts of that which does not belong to himself; but he that lives worthily of it is always held in the highest honor.
—Junius Unidentified English Writer
Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible. Vice is infamous, though in a prince; and virtue honorable, though in a peasant.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet the boat.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
It would be more honorable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more.
—Horace Mann (1796–1859) American Educator, Politician, Educationalist
He who has no inner nobleness has nothing, even if he be of noble birth.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
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.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Some decent, regulated preeminence, some preference given to birth, is neither unnatural nor unjust nor impolitic.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
It is fortunate to come of distinguished ancestry.—It is not less so to be such that people do not care to inquire whether you are of high descent or not.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Some men by ancestry are only the shadow of a mighty name.
—Lucian (c.120–c.200 CE) Greek Satirist, Rhetorician, Writer
All history shows the power of blood over circumstances, as agriculture shows the power of the seeds over the soil.
—Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–86) American Literary Critic
The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.
—Richard Whately (1787–1863) English Philosopher, Theologian
Mules are always boasting that their ancestors were horses.
—German Proverb
Pride in boasting of family antiquity, makes duration stand for merit.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann (1728–1795) Swiss Philosophical Writer, Naturalist, Physician
Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding nobility of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Is anyone simply by birth to be applauded or punished?
—The Hitopadesha Indian Collection of Fables
It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
Birth is nothing where virtue is not.
—Moliere (1622–73) French Playwright