ancestry quotes

The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arousethesleeper, toshakethe complacent pillars ofthe world.He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, and shows the world its present, and points the way to its new birth.He isat oncetheproduct and thepreceptorof his time.

- Norman Bethune
  Letter from Madrid, 5 May. Quoted in Ted  Allen and Sydney Gordon The Scalpel, The Sword (1952).

   In marrying, a man does not, to be sure, marry his wife's mother; and yet a prudent man, when he begins to think of the daughter, would look sharp at the mother; ay, and back to the grandmother too, and along the whole female line of ancestry.

- Maria Edgeworth
  Count O'Halloran's advice to Lord Colambare. The Absentee, ch.15.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestryand by a common hatred of its neighbours.

-William Ralph Inge
Sagittarius and George.