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Heritage Quotes
"My grandfather was Catholic; my grandmother, Jewish. Crossing over from Bavaria, as immigrants to the United States, the ship started to sink. My grandmother jumped overboard. My grandfather followed, to save this girl he had never met."
9
"I believe it is important for the university to always remember its roots."
7
"It is worthwhile for anyone to have behind him a few generations of honest, hard-working ancestry."
7
"She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises."
7
"One of the major contributions of the Protestant faith to the world is the culture of dignity of labour."
6
"The royal throne of kings this scepter'd isle This earth of majesty this seat of Mars This other Eden demi-paradise This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war This happy breed of men this little world This precious stone set in the silver sea."
6
"Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it."
6
"We hang on to our values, even if they seem at times tarnished and worn; even if, as a nation and in our own lives, we have betrayed them more often that we care to remember. What else is there to guide us? Those values are our inheritance, what makes us who we are as a people. And although we recognize that they are subject to challenge, can be poked and prodded and debunked and turned inside out bu intellectuals and cultural critics, they have proven to be both surprisingly durable and surprisingly constant across classes, and races, and faiths, and generations. We can make claims on their behalf, so long as we understand that our values must be tested against fact and experience, so long as we recall that they demand deeds and not just words."
6
"I am, for the most part, who I am because my good mother was who she was."
6
"Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pristine pedigree, refined through ages of selective breeding and the occasional mercy culling.It was life, and death, and all that spanned between.It was his birthright."
5
"Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one."
5
"London? Paris? Berlin? Zurich? Maybe Brussels, center of the young union? They all strive to outdo one another culturally, architecturally, politically, fiscally. But Rome, it should be said, has not bothered to join the race for status. Rome doesn't compete. Rome just watches all the fussing and striving, completely unfazed, exuding an air like: 'Hey- do whatever you want, but I'm still Rome. I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this town, so grounded and rounded, so amused and monumental, knowing that she is held securely in the palm of history. I would like to be Rome when I am an old lady."
5
"Of course I realized that the Protestants denominations of the world have grown and matured over the years, but maybe we should not throw away the gains of the old Protestants that brought us to our modern day civilization."
4
"Your mother was a hero. She developed a spell for gnomeatic fever. And she was the youngest headmaster in Watford history.Baz is looking at Penny like they've never met."And, Penny goes on, "she defended your father in three duels before he accepted her proposal."That sounds barbaric, I say."It was traditional, Baz says."It was brilliant, Penny says. "I've read the minutes."Where? Baz asks her."We have them in our library at home, she says "My dad loves marriage rites. Any sort of family magic, actually. He and my mother are bound together in five dimensions."
4
"In the early days of the December that my father was to die, my younger brother brought me the news that I was a Jew. I was then a transplanted Englishman in America, married, with one son and, though unconsoled by any religion, a nonbelieving member of two Christian churches. On hearing the tidings, I was pleased to find that I was pleased."
3
"A plaited link exists between every person and his or her ancestors, not simply through genealogical records, but in the same manner that the soul of a child, from which we sprang from, traces a direct connection to the matured soul of the adult."
3
"This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak-the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning."
3
"Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world."
3
"A land is precious, but ours is to be revered."
2
"At the centre of all these noble races we cannot fail to see the blond beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast avidly prowling round for spoil and victory; this hidden centre needs release from time to time, the beast must out again, must return to the wild: - Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings - in this requirement they are all alike. It was the noble races which left the concept of 'barbarian' in their traces wherever they went; even their highest culture betrays the fact that they were conscious of this and indeed proud of it."
2
"Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'"
2
"Long before all these divisions were opened between home and the road, betweens a woman's place and a man's world, humans followed the crops, the seasons, traveling with their families, our companions, animals, our tents. We built campfires and moved from place to place. This way of traveling is still in our cellular memory. Living things have evolved as travelers, Even migrating birds know that nature doesn't demand a choice between nesting and flight."
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