Descent Quotes
More Descent Quotes
Thismiry slough, issuch a place as cannot be mended: It is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sindoth continually run, and therefore isit called the Slough of Despond.
john bunyan— 1678 The Pilgrim's Progress, pt.1.
That the Macedonians were of Greek stock seems certain. The claim made by the Argead dynasty to be of Argive descent may be no more than a generally accepted myth, but Macedonian proper names, such as Ptolemaios or Philippos, are good Greek names, and the names of the Macedonian months, although differed from those of Athens or Sparta, were also Greek. The language spoken by the Macedonians, which Greeks of the classical period found unintelligible, appears to have been a primitive northwest Greek dialect, much influenced by the languages of the neighboring barbarians.
— J.R. Hamilton, Australian historian, "Alexander the Great", Hutchinson, London, 1973
If there be no nobility of descent in a nation, it is all the more indispensable that there should be nobility of ascent; a character in them that bear rule, so fine and high and pure, that as men come within the circle of its influence, they involuntarily pay homagetothat which is the one pre-eminent distinctionthe royalty of virtue.
Henry Codman Potter— 1889 Washington centennial address, 30 Apr.
From yon blue heavens above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.
Tennyson— 1842 Poems,'Lady ClaraVere deVere', stanza 7, l.50-6.
For what we cannot accomplish, what is denied to love, what we have lost in the anticipation a descent follows, endless and indestructible.
william carlos williams— 1948 Paterson, bk.2,'Sunday in the Park',1.
The Sizemores are the laughing stock of wannabee genealogy. They claim Cherokee descent, but their paper trail shows them to be white.
lisa alther— Kinfolks
Higgins: Is [assassination] only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden?Enda Kenny: I know you are a good Christian man who has your job to do in here from a political point of view. Many of his victims in the twin towers in New York were of Irish descent or directly Irish.
joe higgins— Enda Kenny apologising to Higgins after slandering him. Irish Independent
As a young man of pure British descent, some of whose forefathers have held high position in the British army, I have always been desirous of devoting what little capability and energy I may possess to the country which I love so dearly.
william joyce— Peter Martland, "Lord Haw Haw: The English voice of Nazi Germany" (The National Archives, 2003), p. 145. UK National Archives KV 2/245/301a.
— Letter to the University of London Military Education Committee, 9 August 1922.
Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he was dying in a foreign land, "The descent to Hades is the same from every place."
diogenes laërtius— Anaxagoras, 6.
If there be no nobility of descent, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent, — a character in them that bear rule so fine and high and pure that as men come within the circle of its influence they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction, the royalty of virtue.
Henry Codman Potter— Address at the Washington Centennial Service in St. Paul's Chapel, New York, April 30, 1889.
Deconstructing the concept of race not only goes against the tendency of virtually every known culture to classify and build family histories according to some measure of common descent, it also ignores the work of biologists studying non-human species.
j. philippe rushton— Mankind Quarterly, Winter98, Vol. 39 Issue 2, p231
In 1990 [Mother Teresa] made a trip to Albania, then the most oppressive of the Balkan Stalinist states, and laid a wreath on the grave of the dictator Enver Hoxha as well as on the irredentist monument to "Mother Albania". She was herself of Albanian descent (born in Skopje, Macedonia), but many Albanians were shocked by her embrace of Hoxha's widow and her silence on human rights.
enver hoxha— Christopher Hitchens, Saint to the rich: There was less -- and more -- to Mother Teresa than met the eye., Salon, Sept. 5, 1997
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.
Immanuel Kant— [N]ur die Höllenfahrt des Selbsterkenntnisses bahnt den Weg zur Vergötterung ...Ak 6:441
While it is true that many Muslim scholars who composed their works in Arabic, both in the religious and in the intellectual sciences, have been of non-Arab descent, Ibn Khald?n's use of the term Arab in his history seems to indicate a class of people and not a group. Most scholars believe that, in many instances, Ibn Khald?n uses the name Arab to mean bedouin. Other scholars, such as Mohamed Chafik, deny this.
ibn khaldun— Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History pp. 14-16 (1950)
There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.
charles krauthammer— International Herald Tribune, Paris, 31 October 1990, as cited in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Andrews, Columbia University Press, p. 711 : ISBN 0231071949
If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.
john lancaster spalding— p. 181 (Aphorisms and Reflections (1901))
The noble Moor of Spain is anything but a pure Arab of the desert, he is half a Berber (from the Aryan family) and his veins are so full of Gothic blood that even at the present day noble inhabitants of Morocco can trace their descent back to Teutonic ancestors.
houston stewart chamberlain— Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the 19th Century (1899), Adamant Media Corporation, 2005, p.398
The intervals of time that separate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.
— Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time—Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life (1999), p. 23.
The noble Moor of Spain is anything but a pure Arab of the desert, he is half a Berber (from the Aryan family) and his veins are so full of Gothic blood that even at the present day noble inhabitants of Morocco can trace their descent back to Teutonic ancestors.
houston stewart chamberlain— Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the 19th Century (1899), Adamant Media Corporation, 2005, p.398
Philip was born a Greek of the most aristocratic, indeed of divine, descent... Philip was both a Greek and a Macedonian, even as Demosthenes was a Greek and an Athenian...The Macedonians over whom Philip was to rule were an outlying family member of the Greek-speaking peoples.
— Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "Philip of Macedon" Duckworth Publishing, February 1998
If there be no nobility of descent, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent, a character in them that bear rule so fine and high and pure that as men come within the circle of its influence they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction, the royalty of virtue.
— Bishop Henry C. Potter, address to the Washington Centennial Service in St. Paul's Chapel, New York (Apr. 30, 1889).
From yon blue heavens above us bent, The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.
— Alfred Tennyson, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Stanza 7. ("The Grand Old Gardener" in 1st Ed.).
Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he was dying in a foreign land, "The descent to Hades is the same from every place."
— Anaxagoras, 6. (Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers)
To guard against this, we must proceed as follows. Let down a lighted lamp, and if it keeps burning, a man may make the descent without danger.
— Chapter VI, Sec. 13 (Book VIII)
