W. H. Auden Quotes

Of what avail are pedigrees?

Pride in boasting of family antiquity, makes duration stand for merit.

Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.

You were only truly patriotic if you had a laborer for a grandfather and were glad of it.

As I don't know what life would be like without my Chaplin connections, I work with them. I'm just really happy it's a family I can be proud of; it's not as if I'm related to some Z-list celebrity.

Mum and I were delighted to find out we were descended from 'bog-trotters.'

My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.

Ah, beware of snobbery; it is the unwelcome recognition of one's own past failings.

Our ancestors are totally essential to our every waking moment, although most of us don't even have the faintest idea about their lives, their trials, their hardships or challenges.

I'm related to Davy Crockett on my mom's side. Honest.

To turn our hearts to our fathers is to search out the names of our deceased ancestors and to perform the saving ordinances in the temple for them. This will forge a continuous chain between us and our forefathers eventually all the way back to Father Adam and Mother Eve.

I am fighting royalty. I have gypsy kings on both sides of the family.

High birth is an accident, not a virtue.

All these black people want to be related to Thomas Jefferson. I want to be related to Bill Gates.

What is the use of your pedigrees?

People will not look forward to posterity who are not anxious to look backward to their ancestry

I'm just so proud to be from San Francisco and to have a family history there. It's only two generations back, but still, it's two generations in San Francisco. I love it. I'm so proud of it.

When I was young, we always went to our posh cousins at Christmas. My dad made sure we had new shoes and clean clothes - he was really proud - and that's why I felt different from everyone living around me. We had the first television on the estate, the first fridge.

Blue Ivy can say she knows who her great-great-great-great-grandfather is. How many people can say that?

Inverted snobbery is just as dangerous as snobbery itself, you know - that pride in having nothing.

A man's ancestry is a positive property to him.

I come from a long line of generations!

My brother's researched our early family history. He found a letter from a fella who said he used to be in love with my mum.

I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Barontage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; . . .