I don't have to look up my family tree, because I know that I'm the sap.
Genealogy. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.
If your descent is from heroic sires, show in your life a remnant of their fires.
Nothing is so soothing to our self esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.
Heredity is nothing, but stored environment.
The scholar without good breeding is a nitpicker; the philosopher a cynic; the soldier a brute and everyone else disagreeable.
Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.
Breed is stronger than pasture.
Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
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.
Is anyone simply by birth to be applauded or punished?
Stillness and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. Vulgar persons can't sit still, or at least must always work their limbs and features.
Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.
None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married.
I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
The precise form of an individual's activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity.
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.
High birth is an accident, not a virtue.
We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.
The person who has nothing to brag about but their ancestors is like a potato; the best part of them is underground.
The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.
— Ovid
Hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendants.
— Plato
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
— Plutarch
From our ancestors come our names from our virtues our honor.
— Proverb
Unworthy offspring brag the most about their worthy descendants.
Mules are always boasting that their ancestors were horses.
Clever father, clever daughter; clever mother, clever son.
There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.
My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet the boat.
Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrations and revolutionists.
Those who boast of their decent, brag on what they owe to others.
— Seneca
No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.
— Seneca
He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.
— Seneca
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.
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.
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
The kind of ancestors we have had is not as important as the kind of descendants our ancestors have.
Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
— Voltaire