The person who has nothing to brag about but their ancestors is like a potato; the best part of them is underground. – Sir Thomas Overbore

Mules are always boasting that their ancestors were horses. – Proverb

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