229 Quotes About Ancestors

Civilization is always threatened from below, by patterns of belief and emotion that may once have been useful to our ancestors, but that are useful no longer.

I don’t think my journey has to be harrowing to be important. Simply doing the tasks of the day is enough. Such as getting up every morning to go to work to support my family and sacrificing personal time in service to others, teaching my children to give thanks for what they have and to care for others.

More than anything, this place feels familiar. I bury my hands in the hot sand and think about the embodiment of memory or, more specifically, our natural ability to carry the past in our bodies and minds. Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation. I quietly thank this ancestor of mine for surviving the trip so that I could one day return.

If you can make your ancestors real for yourself, learn their stories and who they were, your life - and death - will take on added meaning. You will see yourself in the Big Picture that includes all human life that has come and gone on the planet.

We achieve some measure of adulthood when we recognize our parents as they really were, without sentimentalizing or mythologyzing, but also without blaming them unfairly for our imperfections.

When I am gripped with despair, when I think I might stop, I speak to my dead. Tell them a story. What am I doing with this life? They hold me accountable. I let them make me bolder or more modest or louder or more moving, but I ask them to listen, and then write.

I have always mistrusted the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants," because although I respect and pay homage to the brilliance and resilience of my ancestors, I'm fairly certain that they were not giants, but as powerful and as vulnerable as I am.

The echo is a gift, passed on to us by our ancestors many ages ago, to remind us of ourselves. To confirm our existence. To remedy our loneliness. Though we must be still in order to hear it.

It is so awkward that how our ancestors wasted their whole life and never thought about education or making difference for the future generations. My Grandfather lived more than a 100+ years, married 3 women and as he was illiterate he just wasted 115 fucking years. I wish I could live a hundred years like him to make difference, so the next generation does not use the same insulting words I am using today.