Friday, August 5, 2011

Genealogy Quotes


Ambrose Bierce
“Genealogy, n. An account of one’s descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care”

--------------
Lawrence Overmire
“History remembers only the celebrated, genealogy remembers them all”

--------------
Edgar Watson Howe
“None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors.  The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married.”

--------------
Mark Twain:
“History doesn’t repeat itself- at best it sometimes rhymes”

“Why waste your money looking up your family tree?  Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you”

-------------
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We are the children of many sires, and every drop of blood in us in its turn ... betrays its ancestor."

--------------
Fred Allen
"I don't have to look up my family tree because I know that I'm the sap."

------------
Snapple Cap
“The theory of relativity says that no matter what you do in life, your relatives will have a theory”

-----------
C.S. Lewis
Human beings look separate because you see them walking about separately. But then we are so made that we can see only the present moment. If we could see the past, then of course it would look different. For there was a time when every man was part of his mother, and (earlier still) part of his father as well, and when they were part of his grandparents. If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would look like one single growing thing--rather like a very complicated tree. Every individual would appear connected with every other.”

-----------
Will Rogers
“My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet the boat”

-----------
Sir Thomas Overbury
“The person who has nothing to brag about but their ancestors is like a potato; the best part of them is underground”

-----------------------
Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

3 comments:

  1. Another good one is: "The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." -- Albert Einstein

    ReplyDelete
  2. “You riddle with your genealogy
    Like a Viola. I don’t follow you.”

    [...]

    “One ought not to be thrown into confusion
    By a plain statement of relationship,
    But I own what you say makes my head spin.
    You take my card—you seem so good at such things—
    And see if you can reckon our cousinship.
    Why not take seats here on the cellar wall
    And dangle feet among the raspberry vines?”

    [...]


    “You seem so partial to our great-grandmother
    (Nine times removed. Correct me if I err.)
    You will be likely to regard as sacred
    Anything she may say. But let me warn you,
    Folks in her day were given to plain speaking.
    You think you’d best tempt her at such a time?”

    Robert Frost, "Generations of Men" (1915)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for finding and sharing the awesome quotes. I especially like the one by Lawrence Overmire that “History remembers only the celebrated, genealogy remembers them all”

    ReplyDelete