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)