Ancestor

Ancestor

An ancestor or forebear is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an ancestor (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, and so forth). Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited."

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Famous quotes containing the word ancestor:

    We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority ... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our “white mythology.” Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.
    Ihab Hassan (b. 1925)

    I cannot yet begin to understand
    Why we are proud that an ancestor knew
    The crazy Poe, who was not of our kind
    Bats in the belfry that round and round flew
    In vapors not quite wholesome for the mind.
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    In the core of God’s abysm,—
    Was a weed of self and schism;
    And ever the Daemonic Love
    Is the ancestor of wars,
    And the parent of remorse.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)