Famous quotes containing the words common and/or ancestors:
“How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)