William Saroyan Quotes

What is the use of your pedigrees?

Do the adherents of this mad theory [Evolution] realize the disgrace they are bringing on the most respectable families! There is not an aristocracy in Europe or America that can stand it one moment. For aristocracy is based on the greatness of forefathers…. With a monkey in the background, how can even a Hapsburg or a Guelf put on airs of superiority? How must he hide his face in shame to think, that, as his line lengthens into an obscure antiquity, the foreheads of his house slope, and their jaws project; that he has literally been all his life aping aristocracy, instead of being the real thing; and that, when he has reached his true beginning, his only consolation must be found in the fact that his great skulking, hulking, gibbering baboon of an ancestor rejoices, like himself, in the possession of "the third lobe," "the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle," and "the hippocampus minor.

Kings! Why, what's a king? .... Is their blood purer than our own? We are all the seed of Abraham!

What is high birth to him to whom high birth has never been the theme of his contemplation? What is a throne to him who has never dreamed of a throne?

I've got royal blood coursing through my veins and if the boxing bug is 'something I've inherited through the family bloodline, I'm proud of my genes.

It is awesome to feel you are carrying on the family name.

I think of myself as a young prince from a long line of royalty.

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

Because you are a great noble, you think you are a great genius! Nobility, a fortune, a rank, appointment to office: all this makes a man so proud! What did you do to earn all this? You took the trouble to get born—nothing more.

Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, But leave us still our old nobility.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

I am proud of my family.

People throw legacy and dynasty around a bit too much.

The pride of ancestry is a superstructure of the most imposing height, but resting on the most flimsy foundation. It is ridiculous enough to observe the hauteur with which the old nobility look down on the new. The reason of this puzzled me a little, until I began to reflect that most titles are respectable only because they are old; if new, they would be despised, because all those who now admire the grandeur of the stream would see nothing but the impurity of the source.

Vulgar and common persons, as they carry nothing out of this world, so they leave nothing in it: they receive no eminency in their birth, they acquire none in their life, they have none when they die, they leave none at their death.

I have wondered sometimes if there are not perhaps some disadvantages in having really blue blood in one's veins, like grandmamma and me.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

I was no Marie Antoinette. I was not born to nobility, but I had a human right to nobility.

Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you're Royalty.

I'm proud of being British, but I think our aristocracy is overrated.

I'm not from aristocracy, or anything like that.

I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors. I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

She wanted us to feel we were above everyone in the town. She really did tell us that we were related to Chief Justice John Marshall, and that may have been true. I never did bother to find out.

The family motto of the House of Marlborough from which I descend is Faithful but Unfortunate. But I, by my enterprise, nay daring, have reversed the motto, [to] Faithless but Fortunate.