Unworthy offspring brag the most about their worthy descendants. – Danish proverb
Mules are always boasting that their ancestors were horses. – Proverb
From our ancestors come our names from our virtues our honor. – Proverb
Genealogy. An account of ones descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own. – Ambrose Bierce
If your descent is from heroic sires, show in your life a remnant of their fires. – Nicholas Boileau
Nothing is so soothing to our self esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us. – Van Wyck Brooks
Heredity is nothing, but stored environment. – Luther Burbank
The scholar without good breeding is a nitpicker; the philosopher a cynic; the soldier a brute and everyone else disagreeable. – Lord Chesterfield
Breed is stronger than pasture. – George Eliot
Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Is anyone simply by birth to be applauded or punished? – Hitopadesa
Stillness and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. Vulgar persons cant sit still, or at least must always work their limbs and features. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married. – Edward W. Howe
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
I dont know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be. – Abraham Lincoln
The precise form of an individuals activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity. – Henry Louis
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy. – James Russell Lowell
High birth is an accident, not a virtue. – Pietro Metastasio
