Even if your own ancestors didn’t pass down inspirational quotes, you can still find lots of great sayings and life lessons in what others have to say.
Oscar Wilde quotes about ancestry
The great Irish writer Oscar Wilde had many wry observations about human nature. Here are a few gems related to family history.
“Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one’s own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious.” Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray
“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Importance of Being Earnest
“… after a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.” Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), A Woman of No Importance
“Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.” Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), A Woman of No Importance
Mark Twain on family
On the other side of the Atlantic, Mark Twain, author of Tom Sawyer and so much more, also spoke and wrote many home truths and witty sayings.
“Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.” Mark Twain (1835-1910), Notebook, 1894
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Unknown, often attributed to Mark Twain (1835-1910) but apparently not found in his writings.
Mark Twain’s father died when he was 11, so the quote isn’t drawn from his firsthand life experience. That never stopped him.
Ancestry quotes through the centuries
Here are some one-offs from a selection of writers over the years, from a classical Roman philosopher all the way to a modern Instagram poet.
“A hall full of smoke-begrimed busts does not make the nobleman. No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours; the soul alone renders us noble, and it may rise superior to Fortune out of any earlier condition, no matter what that condition has been.” Seneca the Younger (d. ca. 65 AD), Letters
“Social Life is the aggregate of all the individual men’s Lives who constitute society; History is the essence of innumerable Biographies. But if one Biography, nay, our own Biography, study and recapitulate it as we may, remains in so many points unintelligible to us, how much more must these million, the very facts of which, to say nothing of the purport of them, we know not, and cannot know!” Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), “Thoughts on History” (essay)
“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation of his ancestors.” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Complete Works, Vol. VIII
“We are just stars in our family’s constellation” Stephen Robert Kuta (b. 1978), Life in Monochrome: Poetry and Prose