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Ancestor   Listen
noun
Ancestor  n.  
1.
One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a fore father.
2.
(Biol.) An earlier type; a progenitor; as, this fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.
3.
(Law) One from whom an estate has descended; the correlative of heir.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ancestor" Quotes from Famous Books



... remembered in a general way that Cynthia's husband had been some sort of a wonderful foreign missionary or something; but a man who was Joshua Churchill's only grandchild and heir needed no other ancestor. So Green Valley was astounded one Sunday morning, when the Reverend Campbell was unexpectedly ill, and the Reverend Courtney off somewhere answering a new call, and Green Valley without a pastor, to have Cynthia's boy quietly offer to take charge ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... setting sun), and with the moon.[1278] But these identifications are set aside for the Veda by the fact that in lists of gods he is distinguished from sun and moon.[1279] By others he is regarded as the mythical first man, the first ancestor, with residence in the sky, deified as original ancestors sometimes were, and, as the first to die and enter the world beyond, made ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... wears nothing but a cloth around his loins;—his whole body and face being smeared with an atrocious mixture of soot and molasses. He is supposed to represent the original African ancestor. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... its first personal name between the years of 2 and 5. This first name is always that of some dead ancestor, usually only two or three generations past. The reason for this is the belief that the anito of the ancestor cares for and protects its descendants when they are abroad. If the name a child bears is that of a dead ancestor it will receive the protection of the anito of the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... travel, indeed, were limited by the duties of his position; but whenever he could find leisure, he gratified his roving taste by paying frequent visits to Milan or Venice, where the magnificent palace bestowed upon his ancestor Nicolas II. in the last century, but confiscated during the war with Ferrara, had been restored to him at the peace of Bagnolo. In 1484, he took Duchess Leonora there with a suite of seven hundred persons. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... family of Sliced and Distributed and Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick, has told me of the slaying of Tufetu, their ancestor," I ventured, to steer our bark of conversation into the channel ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... roaring with new interests, new powers, new people, the Hub had lost its scholastic distinction, its historic charm. Each year would see it more easily negligible in American art. It hurt me to acknowledge this, it was like losing a noble ancestor, but there was ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... glowing insect was in itself no greater stride along the highway of progress than the act of picking a tasty fruit from its tree. However, the crude lantern perhaps directed his primitive mind to the possibilities of artificial light. The flaming fagot from the fire was the ancestor of the oil-lamp, the candle, the lantern, and the electric flash-light. It is a matter of conjecture how much time elapsed before his feeble intellect became aware that resinous wood afforded a better light-source than woods which were less inflammable. Nevertheless, pine knots and similar resinous ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... do get a second as it were fractional life in us. It might seem that many of those whose blood flows in our veins struggle for the mastery, and by and by one or more get the predominance, so that we grow to be like father, or mother, or remoter ancestor, or two or more are blended in us, not to the exclusion, however, it must be understood, of a special personality of our own, about which these others are grouped. Independently of any possible scientific value, this 'Vision' serves to illustrate ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... things that are not of God. God being unreal to them, their relation to Him being unrecognized, they turn to what is real to them, and engage in various so-called worships: money-worship, hero-worship, ancestor-worship, the worship of material power and machines, the worship of political States and their rulers. These are false worships. God is the sole object of genuine worship—God and His power which He manifests to us as love, ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer

... the days of Noah comparatively seemed modern history with this dreaming editor. Some of the fanciful writers of Italy were duped: Sansovino, to delight the Florentine nobility, accommodated them with a new title of antiquity in their ancestor Noah, Imperatore e monarcha delle genti, visse e mori in quelle parti. The Spaniards complained that in forging these fabulous origins of different nations, a new series of kings from the ark of Noah had been introduced by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... nor estates of the Marquess Francisco descended to his illegitimate offspring. But in the third generation, in the reign of Philip the Fourth, the title was revived in favor of Don Juan Hernando Pizarro, who, out of gratitude for the services of his ancestor, was created Marquess of the Conquest, Marques de la Conquista, with a liberal pension from government. His descendants, bearing the same title of nobility, are still to be found, it is said, at Truxillo, in the ancient ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... genealogical transmission its proper weight,—after admitting the seemingly capricious facts of what the modern French physiologists call atavism, under which we are made drunkards or consumptives, lunatics or wise men, short or tall, because of certain dominant traits in some remote ancestor,—after conceding all this, does not Nature leave it largely in our own power to counteract both physical and moral tendencies, and to mould the body as well as the mind, if we will only put forth in action ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... day its tail would live till sundown. My boy killed every snake he could; he thought it somehow a duty; all the boys thought so; they dimly felt that they were making a just return to the serpent-tribe for the bad behavior of their ancestor in the Garden of Eden. Once, in a corn-field near the Little Reservoir, the boys found on a thawing day of early spring knots and bundles of snakes writhen and twisted together, in the torpor of their long winter sleep. It was a horrible sight, that afterwards haunted my boy's dreams. He had ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... four things you are disposed to grant, cross the river as best you may." Giw whispered to Kai-khosrau, and told him that there was no time for delay. "When Kavah, the blacksmith," said he, "rescued thy great ancestor, Feridun, he passed the stream in his armor without impediment; and why should we, in a cause of equal glory, hesitate for a moment?" Under the inspiring influence of an auspicious omen, and confiding in the protection of the Almighty, Kai-khosrau at once impelled ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... to convince the judge, his Majesty grew impatient and said to the old Marquis, "King Louis IX., my ancestor, sometimes administered justice himself in the wood at Vincennes; I will to-day follow his august example and ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... spirit which is inherent in man rose up in arms at this favour granted to the "bloated aristocrats"—this outrage upon "the rights of the people." For the three famous tailors of Tooley Street, who began their memorial, "We, the people of England," had many an ancestor ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... an English poet and dramatist. His work as a whole has been pretty well forgotten, but he has been recently brought back to the mind of the public by the revival of his satirical Beggar's Opera, the ancestor of the modern comic opera. Gay published a collection of fables in verse in 1727, "prepared for the edification of the young Duke of Cumberland." A second group, making sixty-six in all, was published after his death. Since ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Britons. These several shadowy forms are probably deities shorn of their divinity and given historic attributes and position, much as, among the Norsemen, Odin, when he ceased to be regarded as the All-father, or God, came to be reckoned as an ancestor of the kings. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... not taken and left—it was consistently adhered to. It does not in the least follow that all Stevensons are of the clan Alpin; but it does follow that some may be. And I cannot conceal from myself the possibility that James Stevenson in Glasgow, my first authentic ancestor, may have had a Highland alias upon his conscience and a claymore in ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... complexion; her hair was heavy, it is true, but its thickness and weight seemed naught but an ungrateful burden; and she had a dull, soft eye. In private she was fond of reading such romances as she could procure by stealth from the library of books gathered together in past times by some ancestor Sir Jeoffry regarded as an idiot. Doubtless she met with strange reading in the volumes she took to her closet, and her simple virgin mind found cause for the solving of many problems; but from the pages she contrived to cull stories of lordly lovers ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... your madhouse, only because I know what I know. Let it be granted, then—MacIan is a mystic; MacIan is a maniac. But this honest shopkeeper and editor whom I have dragged on my inhuman escapades, you cannot keep him. He will go free, thank God, he is not down in any damned document. His ancestor, I am certain, did not die at Culloden. His mother, I swear, had no relics. Let my friend out of your front door, and as ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... Rockville of Rockville was the last of a very long line. It Extended from the Norman Conquest to the present century. His first known ancestor came over with William, and must have been a man of some mark, either of bone and sinew, or of brain, for he obtained what the Americans would call a prime location. As his name does not occur in the Roll of Battle Abbey, he was, of course, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... thinking I've been lucky enough to get hold of some very interesting information about the Websters—about their ancestor Sir Thomas, who distinguished himself in the Peninsular—and I wanted to get it copied under the proper heading, but I daresay we can do that another day. The only thing is, how are you to get there? You are not equal to ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... a name, like that of "sans-Terre," bestowed for some quality or circumstances attached to the bearer;—and I should like to ask your correspondents if they know how this Comte d'Anjou, became entitled to it? He appears, from the date, to be the same Geoffrey who is the ancestor of our Plantagenets, as the Comte d'Anjou, contemporary with William the Conqueror, was named Fulk. If it can be proved that this Count received this addition from his martial prowess, I shall be strongly tempted to return to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various

... attractive young captain, though, with a fine disregard for dates, he was attired in the moth-eaten, faded uniform with tarnished brass buttons and epaulettes which one of his ancestors had worn during the Revolutionary War. But the ancestor had been several sizes larger than his nineteenth century descendant, and the uniform lay in generous folds over the back and shoulders, and was turned up at wrist and ankle, while the great cocked hat, pushed back to show the yellow hair in front, rested on the boy's shoulders ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... comparison of pedigrees, the Signor PUNCHINELLO feels that he could knock these princelings into a cocked hat, (or shall we say a cocked coronet?) Mr. PUNCHINELLO proudly knows that he is His Own Ancestor and the Perpetual Renewer of his own Patent ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... that which built this fortress, most noble Duke," returned the Knight, with a peculiarly soft accent. "My own ancestor was but distantly connected with the last great Earl of Lincoln whom the First Edward ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... the name. He felt very grateful to her for her kindness. He hoped the book had shown him the writing of his ancestor, but he did not know. His parents died when he was a little boy, and if he had any relatives alive, they were unknown to him. He should be glad to believe that the Herrnhuter was his grandfather or great-grandfather. But they must not ask him to run the risk of losing his chance if there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... possessed the two keys to power, the mastery of science and the mastery of the sword. So the Germans were called of God to instil fear and reverence into the hearts of the inferior races. That was the purpose of the First World War under my noble ancestor, ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... at last he had no longer the heart to treat the poor devil roughly; and Tinkeles found out from many a suppressed smile, or short question put, that Anton's intercession for him with the principal was not quite hopeless. And for this he served with the perseverance of his ancestor Jacob. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... and writes in very bad taste. Probably the enmity between him and Caesar arose or was confirmed in this way, as Cato always made a point of being rudest to those whom he most disliked. He fancied that he was imitating his great ancestor, and asserting the virtue of good old Roman bluntness against modern Greek affectation; he did not in the least see that he was himself a curious example of Roman affectation, shown up by the real amenities of intercourse, for which Romans ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... Chinese pug and the Italian greyhound, or the bulldog and the common greyhound. The known range of variation is, therefore, more than enough for the derivation of all the forms of Dogs, Wolves, and Foxes from a common ancestor. ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... wrong, or that kissing is always wrong, or that wearing buttons is always wrong, people are afraid to contradict him for fear they should be contradicting their own great-grandchild. For their superstition is an inversion of the ancestor-worship of China; and instead of vainly appealing to something that is dead, they appeal to something ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... side by side with Cordery or Banister—now names of farmers in my own parish—or other Norman-French names which may be, like those two last, in Battle Abbey roll—and side by side the almost ubiquitous Brown, whose ancestor was probably some Danish or Norwegian house-carle, proud of his name Biorn the Bear, and the ubiquitous Smith or Smythe, the Smiter, whose forefather, whether he be now peasant or peer, assuredly handled the tongs and hammer at his own forge. This holds true equally in New England and in Old. ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... environment alters. When we consider the incalculable, inconceivable lapse of time through which organic life has been swayed by the never-ceasing action of the forces around it, we can imagine what a vast variety of animal forms may have been evolved from some one primal ancestor. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... kind of monotony irksome the march is a dreary business, while to others its bare outline is filled with the interest of a thousand little happenings. The tired, dusty, shabby "Tommy" is a man much more agreeable to talk with than his ancestor of the barrack-room at home; the youngest subaltern has forgotten all about his swagger mess-kit and the "style" of his regiment, and shows himself as the good fellow he is; even the Brigadier forgets the scarlet on his khaki collar, and remembers that he too is a frail mortal. And always, when ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... Vecta, of whome came the kings of Kent, 2 Fethelgeta, or Frethegeath, from whome the kings of Mercia descended, 3 Balday, of whose race the kings of the Westsaxons had their originall, 4 Beldagius, ancestor to the kings of Bernicia, and the Northumbers, 5 Wegodach or Wegdagus, from whome came the kings of Deira, 6 Caser, from whome proceeded the kings of the Eastangles, 7 Nascad alias Saxuad, of whome the kings of the Eastsaxons had their beginning. And here you must note, that although ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (8 of 8) - The Eight Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... these heroes to be, in some way or other, partakers of a divine nature; akin to the gods; usually, either they, or some ancestor of theirs, descended from a god or goddess. Those who have read Mr. Gladstone's 'Juventus Mundi' will remember the section (cap. ix. section 6) on the modes of the approximation between the divine and the human natures; and whether or not they agree with the author altogether, all will agree, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... to write a fine lady's hand, a kind of writing much esteemed among the Portuguese. They are not physically equal to the European Portuguese, but possess considerable ability; and it is said that half-castes, in the course of a few generations, return to the black color of the maternal ancestor. The black population of Angola has become much deteriorated. They are not so strongly formed as the independent tribes. A large quantity of aguardiente, an inferior kind of spirit, is imported into the country, which is most injurious in its effects. We saw many parties carrying ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... had a son, named Chyavana, whom he dearly loved. And to Chyavana was born a virtuous son called Pramati. And Pramati had a son named Ruru by Ghritachi (the celestial dancer). And to Ruru also by his wife Pramadvara, was born a son, whose name was Sunaka. He was, O Saunaka, thy great ancestor exceedingly virtuous in his ways. He was devoted to asceticism, of great reputation, proficient in law, and eminent among those having a knowledge of the Vedas. He was virtuous, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... tell them for me that I don't give a hang whether they want to claim kin with me or not. They did not have the making of me and I am what I am regardless of them. I know perfectly well that I am descended from the same original Bucknors but I'm glad my ancestor mislaid part of the name and I wouldn't have the last syllable back for anything in ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... anything on earth that shows so strongly in the blood as the soldier element, and Elizabeth Harrison, whose great ancestor faced the perils of the frontier warfare, was a leader by force of her inherited ability as a leader. She was elected drill sergeant for the college girls ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... over-joyed Tom that he found courage to offer a suggestion. But he was too unwise this time. "You're absolutely right, Polly dear. That Baxter has nothing better to do than kill time. He never did a stroke of work in his life, nor did his father before him. Those young 'lady's men' who live on their ancestor's rewards of labor, never amount to a ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present, phase of the town. I seem to have a ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... urging, he only drank one glass of the peach-honey, but thanks to a jovial ancestor of whom he had never heard, but of some of whose sins (in accordance with the ancient law) he bore the marks in his temperament, he was peculiarly susceptible to the influences of strong drink, and as he drained the glass at a gulp, a new freedom seemed to enter his soul. The dejection ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... he cried, "do you prefer these swine to those who really wish to serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate the glories of your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn to take as your model? It will not be long before your people's love will be changed to hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy and sloth. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... day the glad little Robins have lived as that first one promised, close by the homes of men, and have done all they could to cheer us and make us happy. For they remember how, once upon a time, their ancestor was a ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... of his father twenty years before, but who had been compelled to postpone his claims to those of his ambitious and unscrupulous mother, Catherine II., had conceived a desire so far to imitate the example of his great ancestor, the founder of the Russian empire, Peter the Great, as to make a personal investigation of the manners of other people besides his own. To use the language in which the empress communicated to Louis XVI. her son's wish to pay ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... the eastern end of Sayn Castle, a lovely girl of eighteen leaned, meditating, with arms resting on the balustrade, the harshness of whose stone surface was nullified by the soft texture of a gaudily-covered robe flung over it. This ample cloth, brought from the East by a Crusading ancestor of the girl, made a gay patch of scarlet and gold against the somber side of ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... said he, "I have taken great interest in your resurrection, as much on my own account as on account of the regiment. The 23d which I have the honor to command, yesterday venerated you as an ancestor. From to-day, it will cherish you as a friend."—Not the slightest allusion to the affair of the morning, in which M. Rollon had undergone ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... lived in a handsome house in the clean and ancient town of Bretton. Her husband's family had been residents there for generations, and bore, indeed, the name of their birthplace—Bretton of Bretton: whether by coincidence, or because some remote ancestor had been a personage of sufficient importance to leave his name to his neighbourhood, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... They branched off in 1487, long before the creation, and have nothing to do with the entail; the first of their line coming from old Sir Michael Wychecombe, Kt. and Sheriff of Devonshire, by his second wife Margery; while we are derived from the same male ancestor, through Wycherly, the only son by Joan, the first wife. Wycherly, and Michael, the son of Michael and Margery, were of the half-blood, as respects each other, and could not be heirs of blood. What was true of the ancestors ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... a family that claimed descent from some distinguished ancestor on the mother's side—some one who had come from England a long time ago, and who, when there, was ranked one of gentle blood. Of the worth of his principles, little was known. He may have been a high-minded and honourable ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur

... be well, then, to clear up the chronology of Dante's thought. When his ancestor Cacciaguida prophesies to him the life which is to be his after 1300,[93] he says, speaking ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... obliged to any of your correspondents who will inform me whether, and where, any diary or private memoranda are known to exist of Adam Loftus, who was Archbishop of Dublin nearly forty years, from 1567 to 1605, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. He was an ancestor of the Viscount Loftus, and of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various

... 1888, his sisters, with the idea of helping him to write the memoir, gave him his grandfather's correspondence, which extended from 1790 to 1839. On looking over these very voluminous papers he became penetrated with an almost Chinese reverence for his ancestor and, after getting the Archaeological Society to absolve him from his promise to write the memoir, set about a full life of Dr. Butler, which was not published till 1896. The delay was caused partly by the immense quantity of documents he had to sift and digest, the number ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

... chiefs has in the course of time been changed to that which I now bear. When the two races of Tsin and Han contended in battle, and filled the empire with tumult, our tribes were in full power: numberless was the host of armed warriors with their bended horns. For seven days my ancestor hemmed in with his forces the Emperor Kaoute; until, by the contrivance of the minister, a treaty was concluded, and the Princesses of China were yielded in marriage to our K'hans. Since the time of Hoeyte ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... attempted to imitate the policy of his ancestor Henry II. He went to Ireland with great pomp. Again the Celtic chiefs flocked to Dublin to swear allegiance to their lord; and as soon as his back was turned commenced not only fighting amongst themselves but even attacking the English Pale. The result of all his efforts ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... ancestor, Joe Miller, has recorded, in his "Booke of Jestes," an epitaph written upon an amateur corn-cutter, named ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various

... despair With the emblems woven there. Little doth the wearer heed Of the heart-break in the brede; 70 A hyena by her side Skulks, down-looking,—it is Pride. He digs for her in the earth, Where lie all her claims of birth, With his foul paws rooting o'er Some long-buried ancestor, Who perhaps a statue won By the ill deeds he had done, By the innocent blood he shed, By the desolation spread 80 Over happy villages, Blotting out the smile of peace. There walks Judas, he who sold Yesterday his Lord for gold, Sold God's presence ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... going to prevent my efforts to become a good ancestor to my descendants," Plank would say laughingly. "They shall have a chance, every one of them. And it will be up to them ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... of your ancestors and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls the immortal ancestor of this noble Lord frowns with indignation at ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... court, in view of the Sherbro native's antipathy to idol worship, we must look for an explanation of the origin of the nomoli to one other feature in the customs of Sherbroland. The Sherbros have a custom almost similar to that of the Timnis, a kindred people. The latter are given to ancestor worship. At the burial of a Timni, a few stones are placed upon the grave, and after three days, when the spirit of the deceased is supposed to have entered into the stones, they are removed to a little shrine in the porch of the family house. The spirit ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... lately made for her. On her head she had placed a wreath of wild flowers, which she must have woven for herself. They were like a fairy crown on her dark head. With the love of bright colors, which she must have inherited from some Italian ancestor, she had twisted a bright ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers

... the Greek custom of attributing the origin of their tribes or nations to some remote mythical ancestor, Hel'len, a son of the fabulous Deuca'lion and Pyrrha, is represented as the father of the Hellen'ic nation. His three sons were AE'o-lus, Do'rus, and Xu'thus, from the two former of whom are represented to have descended the AEo'lians and Do'rians; and from Achae'us and I'on, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... what has been; we look forward to what will be. You are proud and take rank because of what your forefathers did; we are proud and take rank because of what we are doing. And we are doing exactly what they did! Honestly now, which would you rather—worship an ancestor or be an ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... these people, and lots of other people, too, believe in a thing they call Natural Selection. They think, as part of that belief, that men are descended from hairy simian ancestors; assert that even a hundred thousand years ago the ancestor was hairy—hairy, heavy, and almost as much a brute as if he lived in Mr. Arthur Morrison's Whitechapel. For my own part I think it a pretty theory, and would certainly accept it were it not for one objection. The thing I cannot understand ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... which extends in some degree to style, might perhaps be shown to imply a very close intellectual affinity. I am content, however, to notice the literary genealogy as illustrative of the fact that Fielding was the ancestor of one great race of novelists. 'I am,' he says expressly in 'Tom Jones,' 'the founder of a new province of writing.' Richardson's 'Clarissa'[7] and Smollett's 'Roderick Random' were indeed published before 'Tom Jones;' but the provinces over which Richardson ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... a deed which Mr. Chalmers conceives to be the first link of the chain of title-deeds to Douglasdale. Hence, he says, the family must renounce their family domain, or acknowledge this obscure Fleming as their ancestor. Theobald the Fleming, it is acknowledged, did not himself assume the name of Douglas; "but," says the antiquary, "his son William, who inherited his estate, called himself, and was named by others, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... up into Peter Junior's room and sat there where she had sat seven years before—where she had often sat since—gazing across at the red-coated old ancestor, her hands in her lap, her thoughts busy with her son's future even as then. If all the others had lived, would the quandary and the struggle between opposing wills have been as great for each one as for this sole survivor? Where ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... 'My ancestor of the time of the Ligue,' I replied, 'married a Huguenot lady out of the Saintonge, riding two hundred miles through an enemy's country to bring off his bride; and ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... monstrous perfidy and ingratitude of this man, who, after receiving great favors from the Nabob, is not satisfied with oppressing his offspring, but goes back to his ancestors, tears them out of their graves, and vilifies them with slanderous aspersions. My Lords, the ancestor of Sujah Dowlah was a great prince,—certainly a subordinate prince, because he was a servant of the Great Mogul, who was well called King of Kings, for he had in his service persons of high degree. He was born in Persia; but was not, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... shell of thy first ancestor, most noble Dator," replied the man. "It shall be done even as thou sayest," and raising both hands, palms backward, above his head after the manner of salute which is common to all races of Barsoom, he disappeared once more into the entrails of ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... saints and sinners, the minute details of which places being described with that attention to minor details and particulars peculiar to the Chinese mind. The teachings of a later date, that the soul of the ancestor abided in the hall of the ancestors, etc., were a corruption of the ancient teaching. Other Chinese teachers taught that the soul consists of three parts, the first being the "kuei," which had its seat in the belly, and which perished with the body; the second being the ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... catch, and an outer ring of curious scientists, pseudo-scientists and seamen, no find pleased him so much as the frequent discovery of pieces of Cephalodiscus rarus, of which even now there are but some four jars full in the world. It is as interesting as it is uncommon, for its ancestor was a link between the vertebrates and invertebrates, though no one knows what it was like. It has been a vertebrate and gone back, and now has the signs of a notochord in early life, and it also has ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... possibilities in our native flowers, that we owe the gay hybrids in our gardens. Mr. Drummond, a collector from the Botanical Society of Glasgow, early in the thirties sent home the seeds of a species from Texas, which became the ancestor of the gorgeous annuals, the Drummond phloxes of commerce today; and although he died of fever in Cuba before the plants became generally known, not even his kinsman, the author of "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," has done more to ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... Europe has often been accustomed to watch with anxiety the rise of some potent arbiter of her destinies who seems to arrogate to himself a large personal dominion. There was Philip II. There was Louis XIV. There was Napoleon a hundred years ago. Then, a mere shadow of his great ancestor, there was Napoleon III. Then, after the Franco-German war, there was Bismarck. Now it is Kaiser Wilhelm II. The emergence of some ambitious personality naturally makes Europe suspicious and watchful, and leads to the formation of leagues and confederations ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney

... reconsidered [laughter]—as in giving something to the college. [Applause.] Nay, I will say in parenthesis, that even an intention to give it secures that place of which I have spoken. [Laughter.] I find in the records of the college an ancestor of my own recorded as having intended to give a piece of land. He remains there forever with his beneficent intention. It is not certain that he didn't carry it out. The land certainly never came to me, or I should ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... nor were looks of respect, admiration, nay almost of adoration, wanting. I observed one fellow, as the landlord advanced, take the pipe out of his mouth, and gaze upon him with a kind of grin of wonder, probably much the same as his ancestor, the Saxon lout of old, put on when he saw his idol Thur dressed in a new kirtle. To avoid the press, I got into a corner, where, on a couple of chairs, sat two respectable-looking individuals, whether farmers or sow- gelders, I know not, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... draw nigh this thy city, outcasts from a realm once the greatest that the sun looked on as he came from Olympus' utmost border. From Jove hath our race beginning; in Jove the men of Dardania rejoice as ancestor; our King himself of Jove's supreme race, Aeneas of Troy, hath sent us to thy courts. How terrible the tempest that burst from fierce Mycenae over the plains of Ida, driven by what fate Europe and Asia met in the shock ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... true I have never drawn the sword, and perhaps never shall. I am a king of straw, a man of peace; but, by a singular contrast, I love to think of warlike things—that is in my blood. St. Louis, my ancestor, pious by education and gentle by nature, became on occasion a brave soldier and a skillful swordsman. Let us talk, if you please, of M. Vesin, who is ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... conditions, just these and no others? Why should the State ensure protection of person and property? The time was when the strong man armed kept his goods, and incidentally his neighbour's goods too if he could get hold of them. Why should the State intervene to do for a man that which his ancestor did for himself? Why should a man who has been soundly beaten in physical fight go to a public authority for redress? How much more manly to fight his own battle! Was it not a kind of pauperization to make men secure in person and property through ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... appearance of the nobleman—doubtlessly she had been expecting that intrusion. He stopped short, his dark eyes gleaming. It was enough for the moment just to look at her. Place and circumstance seemed forgotten; the spirit of an old ancestor—one of the great khans—looked out in his gaze. Passion and anger alternated on his features; when she regarded him like that he longed to crush her to him; instead, now, he ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... within the borders, and worshipping the God, of Israel, had taken refuge from the Chaldean invasion within the walls of Jerusalem. Knowing their fidelity to their ancestral habits Jeremiah invited some of them to one of the Temple chambers and offered them wine. They refused, for they said that their ancestor Jehonadab ben-Rechab(362) had charged them to drink no wine, neither to build houses, nor sow seed nor plant vineyards. Whereupon Jeremiah went forth and held them up as an example to the men of Judah, not because of any of the particular forms of their abstinence, but because of their ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... forest. The heroism and the cruelties, the hopes and fears of those poor barbarians, darkness never to be removed has hidden from us for ever. In later days monkish historians, whom Milton afterwards followed, ignored these poor early relations of ours and invented, as a more fitting ancestor of Englishmen, Brute, a fugitive nephew of AEneas of Troy. But, stroll on where we will, the pertinacious savage, with his limbs stained blue and his flint axe red with blood, is a ghost not easily to be exorcised from the banks of the Thames, and in some Welsh veins ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... this cacique, exasperated by the rapacity of the corregidor of Tuita, who had laid three repartimientos on the Indians in a single year, seized the tyrannical wretch and strangled him with his own hands. Then, taking the name of his ancestor, Tupac-Amaru, he proclaimed himself the chief of all those who were in ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... it—and they knew it and were not afraid. On one day they were all assembled at the Citadel, at the ceremony which Mohammed Ali was giving in honor of his son, Toussoum. It was the first of March, in 1811, and my ancestor, the father of my father's father, rode out from this palace, through the gate by the court, which is the old gate, in his most splendid attire to greet his sovereign's son. The emerald upon his turban was as large as a man's eye, and his sword hilt was studded with turquoise and ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... Bhils as the former residents and occupiers of the land by the fact that some Rajput chiefs must be marked on the brow with a Bhil's blood on accession to the Gaddi or regal cushion. Tod relates how Goha, [311] the eponymous ancestor of the Sesodia Rajputs, took the state of Idar in Gujarat from a Bhil: "At this period Idar was governed by a chief of the savage race of Bhils. The young Goha frequented the forests in company with the Bhils, whose habits better assimilated with his daring nature than those of the Brahmans. He ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... worship with the bride.' My mother answered them, 'That is all right, he did worship.' Two days after, the news that I did not worship the ancestors reached my wife's parents. They immediately send a woman to me and asked me what was the matter I did not worship the ancestor. I explained to her as well as I could and then she went home. Though I stay very firm for Jesus Christ, I am very sorry that I could not convert my family yet. Do pray for me and for those who do ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various

... combat it with any other phylogenetic hypothesis that has the faintest glimmer of probability. Not one opponent has suggested, or can suggest, any other animal form that can serve as our nearest ancestor than the ape. No one has ever reproached me by saying that Mother Nature has endowed me with too little imagination; on the contrary, I am often accused of having a superfluity of that gift of the gods; but I have often and repeatedly ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... know this my ancestor was not only a military genius, but fit also for the arts of peace, for he played on the bass viol as well as any gentleman at court; you see where his viol hangs by his basket-hilt sword. The action at the Tilt-yard you may ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... day. Another form of the Aramaic alphabet, namely, the so-called Estrangela writing which was in use amongst the Christians of northern Syria, mas carried by Nestorian missionaries into Central Asia and became the ancestor of a multitude of alphabets spreading through the Turkomans as ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... no longer the master of things, all-good, all-powerful, god of the phratriae and of the Greek peoples, ancestor of all the kings, the Agamemnon ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... the fire and uttered terrific shouts, leaping and dancing as that far dim ancestor of his must have leaped and danced when he was glowing with a sudden and mighty triumph. The spirit of the ages had descended upon him too and as he bounded back and forth in the light of the flames he roared forth bitter taunts in a voice worthy of Long Jim himself. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Olesen said; "I won his heart by discovering the lost Sukh Mandir, or Hall of Pleasure, built many centuries ago by a Maharao of Ranipur for a summer retreat in the great woods far beyond Simla. There are lots of legends about it here in Ranipur. They call it The House of Beauty. Rup Singh's ancestor had been a close friend of the Maharao and was with him to the end, and that's why he himself sets such store on the place. You have a good chance if I ask for ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... Oliphant of Gask, who had espoused his cousin Margaret Robertson, a daughter of Duncan Robertson of Struan, and his wife a daughter of the fourth Lord Nairn. The Oliphants of Gask were cadets of the formerly noble house of Oliphant; whose ancestor, Sir William Oliphant of Aberdalgie, a puissant knight, acquired distinction in the beginning of the fourteenth century by defending the Castle of Stirling against a formidable siege by the first Edward. The family of Gask were devoted Jacobites; the paternal grandfather of Carolina Oliphant ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... farmhouse (Mr. Evison’s), and the farm buildings on the same premises, as well as of those now occupied by Mr. Gaunt, whose very name carries us back to the days of the great Norman magnate, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, scarcely less powerful than his ancestor, Gilbert de Gaunt, to whom the Conqueror gave no less than 113 manors; but to John belonged the peculiar distinction of being father of Henry IV., the only sovereign born in our county. This mansion was for some generations the property of a family of substance, named Phillips. The head of this ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... skilful has, as we should expect, been a well-marked tendency all through the history of English agriculture, and began early. For instance, according to the records of S. Paul's Cathedral, John Durant, whose ancestor in 1222 held only one virgate in 'Cadendon', had in 1279 eight or ten at least. At 'Belchamp', Martin de Suthmere, one of the free tenants, held 245 acres by himself and his tenants, twenty-two in ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... would be more surprised than Voltaire to behold the part that Zadig now "performs." The amusing Babylonian, now regarded as the aristocratic ancestor of modern story-detectives, was created as a chief mocker in a satire on ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... go, a dog's been the friend, companion, an' protector of man. Folks say he come from the wolf, but that ain't no reflection on him, seein' that we come from monkeys ourselves; an' I believe, takin' all things into account, I'd as soon have a wolf for a ancestor as a ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... transplanted. He was identified with Ra through the intervention of the older Horus, Haroeris-Harmakhis, and the Minor Ennead, like the Great Ennead, began with a sun-god. This assimilation was not pushed so far as to invest the younger Horus with the same powers as his fictitious ancestor: he was the sun of earth, the everyday sun, while Atumu-Ra was still the sun pre-mundane and eternal. Our knowledge of the eight other deities of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... and I went a little out of the way to have visited Sir John Bankes, but he at London; but here I had a sight of his seat and house, [The Friary in Aylesford parish, now the property of the Earl of Aylesford, whose ancestor Heneage Finch married the eldest daughter and co- heiress of Sir John Bankes.] the outside, which is an old abbey just like Hinchingbroke, and as good at least, and mightily finely placed by the river; ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... her husband; should he be unable to unravel them, his head shall be struck off with an axe, and exposed on the city-gate of Peking; should he unravel them, the Empress Turandot shall become his lawful bride, and together they shall inherit the throne of the celestial empire. We swear it by our ancestor, the sun." ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... power or mana, generally in some particular form, who appears as the typical hero of early Hawaiian romance. His rank as a god is gained by competitive tests with a rival kupua/ or with the ancestor from whom he demands recognition and endowment. He has the power of transformation into the shape of some specific animal, object, or physical phenomenon which serves as the "sign" or "body" in which the god presents himself to man, and hence he controls all objects of this class. Not only ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... improvement in the condition of the lower man. But with the Conservative all such improvement is to be based on the idea of the maintenance of those distances. I as a Duke am to be kept as far apart from the man who drives my horses as was my ancestor from the man who drove his, or who rode after him to the wars,—and that is to go on for ever. There is much to be said for such a scheme. Let the lords be, all of them, men with loving hearts, and clear intellect, and noble instincts, and ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... were a very ancient family, and had inherited the Manor from an ancestor who had fought bravely on the Yorkist side in the days of the Wars of the Roses. In the present generation there was no male heir, and Monica was ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... whose good graces he lived had a desire, we are informed, to behold the gods, after the example of his ancestor Horus. The son of Hapu, or Pa-Apis, informed him that he could not succeed in his design until he had expelled from the country all the lepers and unclean persons who contaminated it. Acting on this information, he brought together all those ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... understood mythologies are interpreted as degradations, from this assumed original belief; thus polytheism was interpreted as a degeneracy from monotheism; nature worship, from psychotheism; zooelotry, from ancestor worship; and, in order, monotheism has been held to be the original mythology, then polytheism, then physitheism or nature worship, ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell

... All novelists have had occasion at some time or other to wish with Falstaff, that they knew where a commodity of good names was to be had. On such an occasion the author chanced to call to memory a rhyme recording three names of the manors forfeited by the ancestor of the celebrated Hampden, for striking the Black Prince a blow with his racket, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... opposite the fire. Not the squire's old carved oak-chair, with its tawny leather cushions. That must needs be sacred evermore—a memento of the dead, standing beside the hearth, revered as the image of an honoured ancestor in ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... see that the old enemy has a grip on me. He pinches, he pinches. He'll get at my vitals one of these days, no doubt. And I've not even the satisfaction of having got my gout in an honourable way. If it had come to me from a fine old three-bottle ancestor! But I, who never had a grandfather, and hardly tasted wine till I was thirty years old—why, I feel ashamed to call myself gouty. Sit down, my wife's at church. Strange thing that people still ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... love and veneration. Sweet is the remembrance of the virtuous, and happy are the descendants of such a father! they will think on him and emulate his virtues—they will remember him, and be ashamed to degenerate from their ancestor. ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... Jingling Thunder's career as a warrior. He afterwards performed even greater acts of valor. He became the ancestor of a famous band of the Sioux, of whom your own father, Ohiyesa, was a member. You have doubtless heard his name in connection with many great events. Yet he was a patient man, and was never known to quarrel with one of his ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs: every shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory: indeed it was high time that he should die. And die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of his grandfather before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus of curses, which were the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the hopeless poverty of Aristeides, though he was the foremost man of his time in Greece, reduced some of his family to the disreputable profession of interpreting dreams, and forced others to live on public charity, putting it quite out of their power to emulate the glorious actions of their ancestor. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... reputed son of a Charioteer, had challenged the supremacy of Prince Arjuna. To this challenge Arjuna had returned a scornful answer; a prince could not cross swords with one who could claim no nobility of descent. "I am my own ancestor," replied Karna, and this perhaps the earliest assertion of the right of man to choose and determine his own destiny. In the realm of knowledge also the great achievements have been won only by men with determined purpose and without any adventitious aids. Undismayed by human ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... with the question of totemism, I may say that the community and village names (as already stated, there are no clan names) do not appear to be referable to any possible totemistic objects. There is no specific ancestor worship, in connection with which I could endeavour to trace out an association between that ancestor and a totemistic object, and there is no special reverence paid to any animal or vegetable, except certain trees and creepers, the fear of which is associated with spirits and ghosts ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... which one stands to eat and drink, as at a restaurant, or—which would appear to be the original meaning—the room in which the counter stands. The word, like the thing it represents, is French. The buffet is the descendant of the credence, and the ancestor of the sideboard, and consequently has a close affinity to the dresser. Few articles of furniture, while preserving their original purpose, have varied more widely in form. In the beginning the buffet was a tiny apartment, or recess, little larger than a cupboard, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... it ever so long. It is a portrait of an ancestor of mine. It belonged to a relative, a distant relative—another branch, you know, in whose family it came down, though we had even more right to it, as we were an older branch," she said, gaining courage ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... in their teetering motion like sandpipers, but in reality belonging to the same family as the tree-loving wood warblers. A problem not yet solved by ornithologists is: what was the mode of life of the ancestor of the many warblers? Did he cling to and creep along the bark, as the black-and-white warbler, or feed from the ground or the thicket as does the worm-eating? Did he snatch flies on the wing as the necklaced Canadian warbler, or glean from the brook's edge as ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... up; don't get on to your ancestor worship," cried Harry, impatiently. "Anyway, Ranald's coming ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... himself as a distinct person, by the name of Majhen Jhad, my tree, whom he reproves, admonishes, and advises, in such terms as 'My tree has broken such a vow'—'If my tree acts thus,' &c. This phrase has been variously explained, as the spirit of the root-man or family ancestor, speaking of his descendant waren as my tree, or as a simple allusion to his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... they partake so largely of that grace and goodness which Allah bestows upon the monarchs whom he greatly loves. Tell them, further, that I had long thought of submitting myself to their sway, to receive the kingdom of Granada from their hands in the same manner that my ancestor received it from King John II., father to the gracious queen. My greatest sorrow, in this my captivity, is that I must appear to do that from force which I would fain have ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... that the difficulty may be explained as follows: Moral qualities, as we know, are heritable, and an isolated tribe, such as is described, might take its rise in some one family, and ultimately in a single ancestor who happened to be a good man, and then maintain its purity. Is it not the case, for instance, that on many unpleasant occasions, such as repudiation of public debts, filibustering raids and so on, the English have often reminded the North Americans of their descent ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... evidently been pondering what Lady Bernard had previously said, "you would consider what is called kleptomania as the impulse to steal transmitted by a thief-ancestor?" ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... seventeenth. The reason is simple. The curriculum is based upon the biological principle of adaptation to environment, and the environment of the average American of 1800 differed but slightly from his ancestor of a century and a half previous. The growth of the curriculum follows, slowly it is often true, upon the growth of knowledge. The growth of knowledge during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was slow and insignificant compared to its ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... are historic," resumed the Marquess meditatively. "There is a necklace which belonged to Madame du Barri, and another which Queen Elizabeth gave to one of her ladies-in-waiting. An ancestor of ours was a son of hers. I think the time has arrived when the jewels should, so to speak, be resurrected; that they should pass ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... more than the descendant of Miles Standish could bear. With a bang, she emptied the coffee-pot and knocked out the grounds, as her ancestor had shaken the arrows out of the snake-skin to replace them with bullets. Henceforth, she was implacable; and yet Flint never dreamed that he had given offence. Imperfect ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... it to her in exchange for the glass beads. I had no right to sell the beads," Ling Foo went on with a deprecating gesture. "I thought the man who owned them would never claim them. But he came this noon. Something belonging to his ancestor—and he demands it." ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... all these Italian wars the Romans had only a number of legends, most of them developed to glorify the heroism of some ancestor of a noble family—a Valerius, a Fabius, ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... peasants flocked to the Ting-stone and received the baptism of Christ the White. Some few, who had mighty kinsmen in the North, fled and spread the evil tidings. Only one neither fled nor was baptized, and that one was Lage Ulfson Kvaerk, the ancestor of the present Lage. He slew his best steed before Asathor's altar, and promised to give him whatever he should ask, even to his own life, if he would save him from the vengeance of the king. Asathor heard his prayer. As the sun set, a storm sprung up with thick darkness and gloom, the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... anything before except a few chickens, and she regarded the incident as a blot on her escutcheon. She was incensed with this idiot who had flung himself before her car, not reflecting in her heat that he probably had a pre-natal tendency to this sort of thing inherited from some ancestor who had played "last across" in front of hansom cabs in the ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... scarcely be said that the Eastern and Spanish ancestor of Bach's Chaconne was terpsichorean, and was unconnected with any ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... were to go back for a generation or two, we might trace out an ancestor who held no higher place in society," Mrs. Lemmington remarked, quietly. "I have no doubt ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... individuals in return for special services which they had rendered to the king. Thus a broken kudurru among M. de Morgan's finds records the confirmation of a man's claims to certain property by Biti-liash II, the claims being based on a grant made to the man's ancestor by Kurigalzu for services rendered to the king during his war with Assyria. One of the finest specimens of this class of charters or title-deeds has been found at Susa, dating from the reign of Melishikhu, a king of the Third Dynasty. The document in question ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... unconnected in blood, or connected only in hatred; and the other a young adventurer alike unconnected with his race, in blood or in love; a being ruling all things by the power of his own genius, and reckless of all consequences save his own prosperity? If the future had been revealed to my great ancestor, the Lord Valerian, think you, Vivian Grey, that you and I should be walking ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... mayst thou be amongst the folk that thou demandedst of me this dower?" "Allah advance in honour the Commander of the Faithful," answered she; "verily thy hand-maid is of the seed of Kisra Anushirwan; but the shifts of time and tide brought me down and low down." Replied he, "They relate that thine ancestor, the Chosroe, wronged his lieges with mighty sore wronging;"[FN98] and she rejoined, "Wherefor and because of such tyranny over the folk hath his seed come to beg their bread at the highway-heads." Quoth he, "They also make mention of him that in after-times he did justice to such ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... Young, Short, and so on. All these are, of course, well-known surnames to-day, and though many men named Long may be small, and many named Short may be tall, we may guess that this was not the case with some far-off ancestor. Sometimes man was added to these adjectives, and we get names ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... party to undermine his position. He was aware that in this hour of the country's need the eyes of a considerable part of the people, even in Holland, were more and more directed to the young prince. There was a magic in his name, which invested the untried boy with the reflected glory of his ancestor's great deeds. The council-pensionary, a past-master in the arts of expediency, was driven to avert the danger which threatened the supremacy of the States party, by proposing to the Princess Amalia that the province of Holland should not only charge themselves with William's education, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... of the Petit family, one of the richest in India and the owners and occupants of the finest palaces in Bombay. Their ancestor, or the first of the family who distinguished himself, was a man of very small stature, almost a dwarf, who was known as Le Petit. He accepted the christening and bore the name honorably, as his sons and grandsons have since done. They are now baronets, but have never dropped it, and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... John's Well was not far away, and Hathersage, our next stage, was where he was buried. We were very much interested in Robin Hood and Little John, as my name was Robert, and my brother's name was John. He always said that Little John was his greatest ancestor, for in the old story-books his name appeared as John Nailer. But whether we could claim much credit or no from the relationship was doubtful, as the stanza in the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... cottages, and churches. Lord Keith had the sense to laugh at all that stuff, but he had not the grand mechanical powers which have now enabled the human race, not to go, but to send one another to the stars. A clumsy affair called a catamaran, the acephalous ancestor of the torpedo, was expected to relieve the sea of some thousands of people who had no business there. This catamaran was a water-proof box about twenty feet long, and four feet wide, narrowed at the ends, like a coffin for a giant. It was filled with gunpowder, and ballasted so ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... other player holds his hands in readiness to catch the ball. He has the appearance of a very careful fielder. Here we have the rudimentary idea of cricket; but how they scored their game, what rules they had, we cannot determine. Stool-ball claims also to be an ancestor of cricket, and consists in one player defending a stool with his hand from being hit by a ball bowled by another player. Here is a simple form of the modern game, the stool being used as a wicket, and ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... every member of the family, yet without compare Sir Conolly, commonly called, for short, amongst his friends, Sir Condy Rackrent, was ever my great favourite, and, indeed, the most universally beloved man I had ever seen or heard of, not excepting his great ancestor Sir Patrick, to whose memory he, amongst other instances of generosity, erected a handsome marble stone in the church of Castle Rackrent, setting forth in large letters his age, birth, parentage, and many other virtues, concluding with the compliment so justly due, that "Sir Patrick ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... them is in yonder mound. It is the grave of the chief and his people. He never lived to see the fulfillment of his prophecy. For it was a year after his death that our ancestor, Manuel Guitierrez, came from old Spain to the Presidio with a grant of twenty leagues to settle where he chose. Dona Maria Guitierrez took a fancy to the canada. But it was a site already in possession of the Holy Church. One night, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... her life, and could see his face. It was very moving, as she remembered it. A long line of scholarly forbears had dowered him with a refinement and grace quite startling in this unornamented spot, and some old Acadian ancestor had lent him beauty. His eyes were dark, and they held an unfathomable melancholy. The line of his forehead and nose ran haughtily and yet delicate; and even after years of absence, Dilly sometimes caught her breath when she thought of the way his head was set upon his shoulders. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... a praenomen, or "Christian name"; also a gentile name of the gens or clan to which he belonged; and commonly in addition a cognomen, usually an epithet descriptive of some personal peculiarity of an ancestor, which had fastened itself upon the immediate descendants of that ancestor. The Livii Drusi were among the noblest of the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... snake, hast thou taken Bhimasena? By obtaining which, or by knowing what wilt thou receive satisfaction, O snake, and what food shall I give thee? And how mayst thou free him.' The serpent said, 'O sinless one, I was thy ancestor, the son of Ayu and fifth in descent from the Moon. And I was a king celebrated under the name of Nahusha. And by sacrifices and asceticism and study of the Vedas and self-restraint and prowess I had acquired a permanent dominion over the three worlds. And when I had ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... his friends and countrymen, both by divers procurements, and sundry rumours of the city, and by many bills also, did openly call and procure him to do that he did. For, under the image of his ancestor Junius Brutus, that drave the kings out of Rome,[99] they wrote: Oh that it pleased the gods thou wert now alive, Brutus: and again, that thou wert here among us now. His tribunal (or chair) where ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... advanced and such species as Agalychnis moreleti, calcarifer, and spurrelli to be primitive. Funkhouser (1957) followed Noble's suggestion and attempted to explain the evolution of the species of Phyllomedusa (sensu lato) by assuming that they evolved from an advanced Hyla-like ancestor. Therefore, she placed those species having large, fully webbed hands and feet near the base of her phylogenetic scheme and hypothesized that evolutionary sequences involved stages of reduction and eventual loss of ...
— The Genera of Phyllomedusine Frogs (Anura Hylidae) • William E. Duellman

... ourselves, but it takes us a long while to find it out. The various inherited instincts ripen in succession. You may be nine tenths paternal at one period of your life, and nine tenths maternal at another. All at once the traits of some immediate ancestor may come to maturity unexpectedly on one of the branches of your character, just as your features at different periods of your life betray different resemblances to your nearer or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... surprising miniature; my father-in-law, who is gradually annihilating himself; and Crillon. This last lives always contented in the same shop while time goes by, like his father and his grandfather, and the cobbler of the fable, his eternal ancestor. Under his square cap, on the edge of his glazed niche, he soliloquizes, while he smokes the short and juicy pipe which joins him in talking and spitting—indeed, he seems to be answering it. A lonely toiler, his lot is increasingly hard, and almost worthless. He ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... origin of the Roman people. We see how the early traditions "mixed human things with things divine," as Livy said had been done to make the origin of the city more respectable; how neas, the far-back ancestor, was descended from Jupiter himself, and how he was a son of Venus, the goddess of love. How Romulus and Remus, the actual founders, were children of the god of war, and thus naturally fitted to be the builders of a nation that was to be strong and to conquer all known peoples on earth. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... over the traces once in a while and break everything to pieces—his promises among them. And it isn't his fault—it's the Spanish and Dutch blood in his veins—the blood of that old hidalgo and his Dutch ancestor, De Ruyter—that crops out once in a while. Harry would be a pirate and sweep the Spanish main if he had lived in those days, instead of being a gentleman who values nothing in life so much as ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... ancestor. Like you, I loved the chase beyond everything in life—beyond our holy faith or the welfare of any human being, man, woman, or child. To all that stood in my path I showed no mercy. There came a time when famine visited the land. The harvest was destroyed by blight ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... beneath, fire was in his eye, rage in his heart—rage and scorn of this presumptuous Two-legs who sought to pit his puny strength against his own quivering, four-legged might. Therefore he mocked Two-legs, scorned and contemned him, laughed ha! ha! (like his long-dead ancestor among the Psalmist's trumpets) and gathered himself ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... echo of thunderous battles by sea and land died away, this particular offshoot of modern romance ceased to flourish, and has never had any considerable revival. The tale-teller of adventure, like his ancestor the epic poet, requires a certain haziness of atmosphere; he must have elbow room for his inventive faculty; and he is liable to be stifled in the flood of lucid narrative and inflexible facts let loose upon recent events in our day ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... money, it is the sin to which youth is the least lenient. But what! can I look round the world and not see its value, its necessity? Year after year, from my first manhood, I have toiled and toiled to preserve from the hammer these last remnants of my ancestor's remains. Year after year fortune has slipped from my grasp; and, after all my efforts, and towards the close of a long life, I stand on the very verge of penury. But you cannot tell—no man whose heart is not seared with many ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... indicated the concern with which they viewed it. Here was a boy who had been placed upon the throne by a woman; he was the same generation as the Emperor who had preceded him, and hence could not worship him as his ancestor. It augured ill both for the Emperor and the empire, and so the boy Emperor began his reign in the midst ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... came to be regarded as owner, instead of a simple manager of the family rights, the nature and continuity of those rights did not change with the title to them. The familia continued to the heirs as it was left by the ancestor. The heir succeeded not to the ownership of this or that thing separately, but to the total hereditas or headship of the family with certain rights of property as incident, /2/ and of course he took this headship, or right of representing the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... in him an able general who had fled the service of the tyrant. "You," said he, "are the very man I have been looking for"; and, taking him up into his chariot, as Jehu did Jonadab, he rejoiced in the assurance of coming victory. The fisherman was Kiang Tai Kung, the ancestor of the royal House of Ts'i in Shantung. Though eighty-one years of age he took command of the cavalry and presided in the councils ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... influence did disperse All her own virtues through the universe. Here some digression I must make, t'accuse Thee, my forgetful, and ingrateful Muse: Couldst thou from Greece to Latium take thy flight, And not to thy great ancestor do right? 60 I can no more believe old Homer blind, Than those who say the sun hath never shined; The age wherein he lived was dark, but he Could not want sight who taught the world to see: They who Minerva from Jove's head derive, Might make old Homer's skull ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... gentleman, raise an honorable monument in the great fane of Christendom over the remains of the enemy of his dynasty, Charles Edward, the invader of England and victor in the rout at Preston Pans—Upon whose head the king's ancestor but one reign removed has set a price—is it probable that the grandchildren of General Grant will pursue with rancor, or slur by sour neglect, the ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... a skilled surgeon, amputating right up to the last joint; among these the divorce laws made in ancient times by the gone-to-dust but still sacred and revered ancestors. Who would give a hang for any old ancestor so ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... mentioned the fact that on that very day her son had become a man. But when Peregrine Orme became a man—though still in his manhood too much devoted to rats—she gloried greatly in her quiet way, and whispered a hope into the baronet's ear that the young heir would not imitate the ambition of his ancestor. "No, by Jove! it would not do now at all," said Sir Peregrine, by no means displeased at ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Ancestor" :   descendant, relation, forefather, ascendant, ancestral, father, relative, ascendent, root, ancestress, ancestor worship, progenitor, forebear



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