Ancestral Spirits

Famous quotes containing the words ancestral and/or spirits:

“And nobility will not be able to help you with your love; Love does not know how to cede to ancestral images.”
—Propertius Sextus (c. 50–16 B.C.)

“But seldom the laurel wreath is seen
Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;
There’s a light and a shadow on every man
Who at last attains his lifted mark—
Nursing through night the ethereal spark.
Elate he never can be;
He feels that spirits which glad had hailed his worth,
Sleep in oblivion.—The shark
Glides white through the phosphorus sea.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)