Quotes about Ancestry

It is well to learn the ethnic backgrounds of your parents, to love and cherish the ancient folklore. But never, never forget, you are an American first. And millions of Americans before you have fought for your freedom. The Nation holds all the terms of our endearment. Support, defend and honor those whose duty it is to keep it safe.

I heard stories from my mother's mother who was an American Indian. She was spiritual, although she did not go to church, but she had the hum. She used to tell me stories of the rivers.

We must pray intently, in agreement with the appeals of our forefathers and predecessors, in order to see a continuation of what they birthed. And we must actively repent of our wrongs and theirs, allowing God to reach back in time, healing our history so that blessings can flow into our present.

All tradition is merely the past.

Marrying a woman of priestly ancestry was a special blessing.

We all stand on the shoulders of the past generation.

I knew I must do all as I was told, yet something burned inside me, a seed of defiance that must have derived from a long-ago ancestor. Perhaps my mind was inflamed from the books I had read and the worlds I had imagined.

As he walked back to the neighbor's he realized that the magic tricks he'd taught himself were childish foolishness. What mattered was the blood that ran through him, the same blood that had flowed through Maria Owens. Once, when he'd cut himself in a tangle of brambles on the way to the lake, drops of his blood had burned through the fabric of his shirt. This was what bloodline magic was. It was inside him.

Our mothers taught us that in the old, old days, when they were their grandmothers and their grandmothers were old—for we are our grandmothers, you understand, only with lots of new and different things added

And we kneeled down right on deck and gave thanks to God for letting us see the land for which our mothers and fathers cried — and lived and died — to see again

I was by myself in this frightening place and SHE WAS NOT THERE! my heart sank. I had never felt more alone in my life, and then, just when I was on the point of dying of loneliness and lack of direction, I wailed: ;I: Oh, Grandmother, you are not here! And she said: But you are.

I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn.