ancestors Quotes

“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order.”

“Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves opposed to probability! Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers’ virtue hath already walked! How would ye rise high, if your fathers’ will should not rise with you?”

“Daddy once told me there’s a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn’t stop the slave masters from hurting their families. Daddy also said there’s nothing more dangerous than when that rage is activated.”

“These people were my relatives, my ancestors. And this place could be my refuge.”

“Of course the tigers sometimes caught them, or a snake bit them, but on the other hand they didn’t have to deal with automobile accidents and industrial pollution.”

“There are and always will be some who, ashamed of the behaviour of their ancestors, try to prove that slavery was not so bad after all, that its evils and its cruelty were the exaggerations of propagandists and not the habitual lot of the slaves. Men will say (and accept) anything in order to foster national pride or soothe a troubled conscience.”

“Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature.”

“Walking upright has its downside. The skeleton of our primate ancestors developed . . . to support a creature that walked on all fours and had a relatively small head. Adjusting to an upright position was quite a challenge, especially when the scaffolding had to support an extra-large cranium.”

“Their ancestors were not as clever in the way yours were and not ruthless in the way yours were, for then would it not be you who would be in harmony with nature and backwards in that charming way?”

“New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration.”

“But my brother said that, underneath, he thought they were frightened. It was because they were frightened, he thought, that they had grown so small. Each generation had become smaller and smaller, and more and more hidden. In the olden days, it seems, and in some parts of England, our ancestors talked quite openly about the “little people.”

“I came to the mound where my ancestors had sometimes camped in the summer. I thought of them and of the happy times spent in my house on the headland, of my canoe lying unfinished beside the trail. I thought of many things, but stronger was the wish to be where people lived, to hear their voices and their laughter.”

“How had the People ever left the surface? Sometimes she wished that her ancestors had stayed to fight it out with the Mud People. But there were too many of them. Unlike fairies who could produce only a single child every twenty years, Mud People bred like rodents. Numbers would subdue even magic. Although she was enjoying the night air, Holly could taste traces of pollutants. The Mud People destroyed everything they came into contact with. Of course they didn’t live in the mud anymore. Not in this country, at least. Oh no. Big fancy dwellings with rooms for everything—rooms for sleeping, rooms for eating, even a room to go to the toilet! Indoors! Holly shuddered. Imagine going to the toilet inside your own house. Disgusting!”

“It is said that the current duke had an ancestor so wise that even as a child he could do complex mathematical calculations. prove difficult geometric theorems, and accurately locate the constellations in the sky.”

“You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways.”

″‘My great-grandmother, Bisabuela Beatriz...’ That was when I began to think of her as my Bisa Bea. And I wanted her picture. ‘Hey, Mama, can I keep the picture? It’s so pretty. She’s like a doll. Can I keep it?‘”

“So why do I need to get to know her as if she were still a girl? You act like she’s alive.”

″‘I love these old photographs. I collect them. This one is especially nice. Who is it?’ she asked. ‘My great-grandmother.’ ‘Of course. I should have guessed. You look so much alike. Anyone looking carefully would realize it. Your face is the same shape, you’ve got the same pointy chin- you’re a perfect copy.‘”

“The first otter to go into deep water had felt the same fear that Tarka felt that night; for his ancestors, thousands of years ago, had been hunters in woods and along the banks of rivers, running the scent of blooded creatures on the earth...”

“No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.”

“Dale and Tomias are best mates. Tomias’s ancestors have lived at Long Hole since the Dreaming. Dale’s grandfather was the first white man to settle here.”

And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stiffness, and the cold, and dark.