Top 100 My Ancestors Quotes
#1. I should like to know if he has sunk a frigate, alone, with a Fleur-de-Nuit on his back; and as for distinction, my ancestors were scholars in China while his were starving in pits.
Naomi Novik
#2. At times is it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles. Wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.
Andre Gide
#3. I brought a Border Collie back home to Vancouver from Wales - where some of my ancestors are from - and needed to challenge him in other ways than just being my pet. So I investigated sheep herding and took a few lessons, and decided I was probably learning more than my dog!
Jane Siberry
#4. My ancestors further back than the first Roman were Hebrews." "The stubborn pride of thy race is not lost in thee," said Arrius, observing a flush upon the rower's face. "Pride is never so loud as when in chains." "What cause hast thou for pride?" "That I am a Jew." Arrius smiled.
Lew Wallace
#5. This tottered ensign of my ancestors
Which swept the desert shore of that dead sea
Whereof we got the name of Mortimer,
Will I advance upon these castle-walls.
Drums, strike alarum, raise them from their sport,
And sing aloud the knell of Gaveston!
Christopher Marlowe
#6. Much to my surprise, as I set them free, I was able to forgive myself for the judgments I had made about them. I now hold them in a loving space in my heart and honor them as my ancestors who love me and guide me each day.
Iyanla Vanzant
#7. I just feel that 'The Color Purple,' which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors.
Alice Walker
#8. I'm made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is
Terry Pratchett
#9. Almost certainly, my ancestors had travelled by sea from Sweden to England in search of prosperity, and the evidence suggests they left Sweden around the ninth or 10th centuries.
Gordon Brown
#11. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#12. By their garbage shall ye know them," Christie yells, like a preacher, a downy preacher. "I swear, by the ridge of tears and by the valour of my ancestors, I say unto you, Morag Gunn, lass, that by their bloody goddamn fucking garbage shall ye christly well know them.
Margaret Laurence
#13. My ancestors come from a part of southern China where most villages can trace their roots back at least a thousand years or even more. However, as a typical American, I have lived in four cities and moved at least seven times.
Laurence Yep
#14. I am out listening for the words, for the breath of my ancestors
Joyce Dyer
#15. I come from a very wiry and long-lived race. Some of my ancestors have been centenarians, and one of them lived 129 years. I am determined to keep up the record and please myself with prospects of great promise. Then again, nature has given me a vivid imagination.
Nikola Tesla
#16. I would like to be like my father and all the rest of my ancestors who never married.
Moliere
#17. I've learned that for Indian people, the opportunity for us to succeed is very slim. So acting was a great tool for that. And in the process of learning about my culture, I've learned how to connect myself again to my ancestors.
Adam Beach
#18. There was a time when my ancestors were proud of the title of chamberlain or butler to the King," said the Baron. "There was also a time," replied Morel haughtily, "when my ancestors cut off your ancestors' heads.
Marcel Proust
#19. I'd always wanted to believe that my ancestors were better people than they probably were. - Princess Emma
E.D. Baker
#20. My father is 100% Japanese and came to the United States when he was only 18 years old. My grandmother still resides in Japan, which has allowed me to travel to the roots of my ancestors with my father.
Apolo Ohno
#21. In the hallowed hall where one of my ancestors, Crazy King Clifford II, once wore his crown - and nothing else. Because he was hot. We're not supposed to talk about him. Finally,
Emma Chase
#22. My ancestors are Rajputs from Jaipur, a lineage of the royal family.
Kangana Ranaut
#23. As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.
Butterfly McQueen
#24. In America when someone asks me my nationality, I can't just say American. I have to go back generations, elaborate on there in Europe my ancestors were from. But here, I can just say it, Je suis Americaine. It feels good.
Bridget Asher
#25. Then the vulture swooped down and away, racing the LeTort spring to the Conodoguinet Creek from there to the Susquehanna river and from there to the sea. Same river my ancestors took to reach the places where they hunted and farmed and buried their dead.
Michele McKnight Baker
#26. To be able to make up stories has been a great gift to me from my ancestors and from the storytellers who were so numerous at Laguna Pueblo when I was growing up. I learned to read as soon as I could because I wanted stories without having to depend on adults to tell or read stories to me.
Leslie Marmon Silko
#27. my ancestors didn't fight there way to the top of the food chain to look down and see me eating leaves
Leslie Connor
#28. My ancestors came from Co Roscommon, transported to Van Diemen's Land for stealing food.
Richard Flanagan
#29. I come of Quaker stock. My ancestors were persecuted for their beliefs. Here they sought and found religious freedom. By blood and conviction I stand for religious tolerance both in act and in spirit.
Herbert Hoover
#30. I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against.
Ben Stein
#31. The old fire pit was ancient. I couldn't say how many of my ancestors warmed themselves at this outdoor hearth. Sitting around it was rather affecting, especially when you thought about the countless people who had occupied your very spot in some distant past. It was kind of surreal.
J.M. Northup
#32. My ancestors are all crazy. My great-great-granddad, he was the last man to live in a cave in Nottingham.
Neon Hitch
#33. My ancestors were fighters, something I have inherited.
Eric Cantona
#34. it was the kind of moon
that I would want to
send back to my ancestors
and gift to my descendants
so they know that I too,
have been bruised...by beauty.
Sanober Khan
#35. My ancestors include Monahwee, who was one of the leaders in the Red Stick War, which was the largest Indian uprising in history, and Osceola, who refused to sign a treaty with the United States.
Joy Harjo
#36. I never really knew about my ancestors until this year, when I learned that the name Cobain was Irish. My parents had never bothered to find that stuff out.
Kurt Cobain
#37. American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them.
Spike Lee
#38. The sins of my ancestors are not mine,' I said. 'If there were any. And I am nothing like you.
Alaric Longward
#39. Blues for me is having things not go your way - life, love, job, money, ... It is not about the oppression of my ancestors, who were trying to get back at the overseers. Blues is different for my generation.
Robert Cray
#40. I am an offspring of the dead. I am descended from the deceased. I am the progeny of phantoms. My ancestors are the illustrious multitudes of the defunct, grand and innumerable. My lineage is longer than time. My name is written in embalming fluid in the book of death. A noble race is mine.
Thomas Ligotti
#41. I have two Filipino nannies who have British passport and not me. I don't need British passport. When you were running around in an animal skin, my ancestors were building the pyramids.
Mohamed Al-Fayed
#42. It's the land of my ancestors. I need to set my feet on that soil and see how I feel. I have missed my mother's warm tortillas and many more things than I can name.
Ruth Behar
#43. The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape,
In forms imaginary, th' unguided days
And rotten times that you shall look upon
When I am sleeping with my ancestors.
William Shakespeare
#44. I come from a family that has been here for almost 200 years. My ancestors started a very dangerous gunpowder business in 1802, and my great- grandfather and his father were both killed in gunpowder explosions.
Pete Du Pont
#45. I am a congenital liar. Some Highlanders are. To my ancestors, the truth was so sacred as to be unusable.
Gladys Mitchell
#46. My ancestors were conquerors, though now they are heroes in our history." Glancing at Amos, he said, "But we wrote the history.
Raymond E. Feist
#47. like all other living creatures, I am the descendant of survivors, so the fear in my head is the voice of my ancestors whispering their accumulated wisdom.
David George Haskell
#48. My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time.
Garrison Keillor
#49. Most people can't tell if I'm European, Asian, African or American. Isn't it good to know my ancestors weren't racist motherfuckers?
Daniel Marques
#50. No Christian assumes the Jews are right about everything, but they knew God during tens of centuries during which my ancestors were worshiping trees and eating each other, so when they talk, I listen.
Stephen Graham
#51. Vandiya Devan: "You dare to ask 'me' who I am? I am Vallavareyan, Vandiya Devan of the Vanar Clan in Thiruvallam . Once upon a time, soldiers like you, proudly carved the names of my ancestors on their chests.
Sumeetha Manikandan
#52. As a bookish child, I would come to see the one-child policy as one of the most fascinating and bizarre things about the land of my ancestors, equal parts Aldous Huxley and King Herod.
Mei Fong
#53. Without acquainting me with the language or the literature or the oral family histories which my ancestors had loved, they volunteered to make me ignorant and rootless as proof of their patriotism.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
#54. people talk with a sense of wonderment about the incredible bravery of us Rajputs. This is missing the obvious. Whether it's Father, my brothers, my ancestors, I or my countrymen, we are, it goes without saying, unsurpassedly fearless and valiant.
Kiran Nagarkar
#55. Misguided people sometimes create misguided ideas. Some of my ancestors were Oromo. How can I colonize myself?
Haile Selassie
#56. I think my ancestors had to be enormously strong emotionally and very courageous.
Jim Murphy
#57. My father chose my name , and my last name was chosen by my ancestors . That's enough, I myself choose my way
Ali Shariati
#58. Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.
Tad Williams
#59. Somebody would think I was trying to get favored treatment because my ancestors had the name Moon. And that's a joke.
Buzz Aldrin
#60. My ancestors are Highland Scots, and my father's home in north Alabama is so much like northwest Arkansas. I have the same allergies in both places.
Ellen Gilchrist
#61. My ancestors were Brahmins. They spent their lives in search of god. I am spending my life in search of man.
Muhammad Iqbal
#62. Even before the concentration camps, I felt it was my duty to my ancestors to preserve a world which might cease to exist.
Roman Vishniac
#63. Most of the ancestors that I can trace were born here in the United States of America. And then it goes back to slavery. And I'm sure my ancestors go all the way back to Africa, but I feel more of an affinity for America than I do for Africa. I'm a black man in America.
Herman Cain
#64. I had believed myself superior to my ancestors. But all it took was the proper amount of pain for me to return to the traditions of old. For even thinking such a thing, I am sorry. I apologize to you as a Wakandian, as a human being, and I apologize to my nation.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#65. My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times, men would not stop to ask for directions.
Elayne Boosler
#66. I'd love to meet my ancestors. I'd love to be able to speak to them.
Louise Erdrich
#67. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington's troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave.
Paul Robeson
#68. I have not tolerated an atheist in the ranks of the SS. Every member has a deep faith in God, in what my ancestors called in their language Waralda, the ancient one, the one who is mightier than we are.
Heinrich Himmler
#69. Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.
Pete Seeger
#70. If I have courage, it is because I have faith in the knowledge of my ancestors.
Mau Piailug
#71. I was born by myself but carry the spirit and blood of my father, mother and my ancestors. So I am really never alone. My identity is through that line.
Ziggy Marley
#72. I glanced heavenward and asked for help to stop acting like a complete idiot around Niko. If this was how my ancestors responded to sexy men, it was a wonder we'd ever propagated.
Rebecca Chastain
#73. Some of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution. A few more wore red coats, a few wore blue coats, and the rest wore no coats at all. We never did figure out who won that war.
Edward Abbey
#74. How can a man with your heritage not be able to tap-dance." I heard Hawk's gliding chuckle. "My ancestors busy eating missionaries, boy.
Robert B. Parker
#75. I will honor my ancestors in StarClan," Bramblestar vowed, "but not those who have ever walked in the Dark Forest. Guide my steps wisely, warriors of the past." He lowered his head. "And warriors of now".
Erin Hunter
#76. DNA is the messenger which illuminates that connection,handed down from generation to generation,carried,literally,in the bodies of my ancestors.
Bryan Sykes
#77. I have written about the women around me. My ancestors, my relatives, lovers. It was a way of trying to make it all make sense.
John Edgar Wideman
#78. The way I see it, my ancestors put a lot of effort into getting out of the goddamn ocean and I don't think I should throw all of that hard work back in their faces.
Terry Pratchett
#79. I went to Cork, Ireland, and stood on the dock some of my ancestors had left from. I felt their ghosts gather round me, and I cried to imagine what it must have felt like - leaving that beautiful land and those beloved people, knowing it was forever.
Luanne Rice
#80. I am not carrying on a war of extermination against the Romans. I am contending for honor and empire. My ancestors yielded to Roman valour. I am endeavouring that others, in their turn, will be obliged to yield to my good fortune, and my valour.
Hannibal
#81. all my ancestors were from the South and some even fought and died for the losing side. Perhaps that's why I was long resigned to my failure to publish.
Katherine Paterson
#82. As I am from Hawai'i, the ocean is part of my culture and who I am. My ancestors were great ocean explorers.
Nainoa Thompson
#83. I'm free ... to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't. I can. And my children will.
Jefferson Smith
#84. It turns out one of my ancestors fought in the Continental Army, so I was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution.
Henry Louis Gates
#85. I've always thought you have to live life looking forwards, not backwards. I've had no interest at all in who my ancestors are.
Jeremy Paxman
#86. Sweden is the home of my ancestors, and I have reserved a special place in my heart for Sweden.
Carl D. Anderson
#87. I didn't care anymore what my ancestors would think. We were the Red Army and needed to eat.
Dave Eggers
#88. Right here, right now? This is precious. This is life. You're alive. Somehow, all of the genetic material of all those thousands of ancestors came together in the perfect combination to make you, exactly as you are. That's magical - it's the greatest kind of magic I know. Our very existence." My
Loretta Lost
#89. I dream of songs. I dream they fall down through the centuries, from my distant ancestors, and come to me. I dream of lullabies and sea shanties and keening cries and rhythms and stories and backbeats.
Rosanne Cash
#90. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.
Joshua
#91. Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation.
Raquel Cepeda
#92. I was being groomed as an undergraduate to specialize in Midwestern prehistory, but going back to my teenage days, my interest has always been in our early human ancestors. I wanted to work in Africa.
Donald Johanson
#93. My Great Ancestors Suffered A Lot.
They Never Smoked Marihuana.
Petra Hermans
September 13, 2016
Petra Hermans
#94. A fossil is so powerful. It's moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil ... not the cross.
Greg Graffin
#95. As I explore the wilderness of my own body, I see that I am made of blood and bones, sunlight and water, pesticide residues and redwood humus, the fears and dreams of generations of ancestors, particles of exploded stars.
Anne Cushman
#96. I'm a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, a bit of Spanish and one-eighth American. I've often wondered if I have an Asiatic ancestor from the East as well because I have deep-set eyes. Make-up artists are constantly trying to shade my eyelids, and I have to point out that I don't have any!
Olivia Williams
#97. I miss the days of burning your kind at the stake. For generations we have settled for financial ruin and ostracization of your whorish ancestors - but know this, I will personally gut you and put your head on a pike in my parlor.
Heather McVea
#98. In the West the past is like a dead animal. It is a carcass picked at by the flies that call themselves historians and biographers. But in my culture the past lives. My people feel this way in part because death does not separate us from our ancestors.
Miriam Makeba
#99. When I was a child, my parents took my brothers and me to Port-au-Prince during the summer so we could get to know the country of our ancestors. Because Haiti is an island, the beach is everywhere. Haitians are particular, even snobby, about beaches.
Roxane Gay
#100. My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
John Irving
