Where is the dust that has not been alive?
The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
From human mould we reap our daily bread. [ Young ]
I have no urns, no dusty monuments;
No broken images of ancestors,
Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales
Of long descents, to boast false honors from. [ Ben Jonson ]
He adds honour to the honour of his ancestors. [ Motto ]
Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labor when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and offerings, and a thankful strain. [ Pope ]
Our ancestors grew not great by hawking and hunting. [ Proverb ]
Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors. [ Voltaire ]
He remembers his ancestors, but forgets to feed his children. [ Proverb ]
He is ignoble that disgraces his brave ancestors by a vicious life. [ Proverb ]
Our ancestors have travelled the iron age; the golden is before us. [ Bernardin de St. Pierre ]
From our ancestors come our names, but from our virtues our honours. [ Proverb ]
He that boasts of his ancestors confesses that he has no virtue of his own. [ Charron ]
Take a stick to a Highland laddie, and it's no him you hurt, but his ancestors. [ J. M. Barrie ]
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. [ Burke ]
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. [ Plutarch ]
Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession's phlegm, and needs no ancestors. [ Aaron Hill ]
What is birth to a man if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such an offspring? [ Sir P. Sidney ]
He that boasts of his ancestors, the founders and raisers of a family, doth confess that he hath less virtue. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Of all the authorities to which men can be called to submit, the wisdom of our ancestors is the most whimsically absurd. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither their good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity. [ Sallust ]
Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with. [ Sheridan ]
It has long seemed to me that it would be more honorable to our ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more. [ Horace Mann ]
It is, indeed, a blessing, when the virtues of noble races are hereditary; and do derive themselves from the imitation of virtuous ancestors. [ Nabb ]
Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce. [ Barrow ]
People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants. [ Macaulay ]