In great pedigrees there are Governours and Chandlers.
Believe me, I didn't think there was some princely family I belonged to.
Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.
Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou? Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead? Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low Some less majestic, less beloved head?
Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.
It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.
Fond man! though all the heroes of your line Bedeck your halls, and round your galleries shine In proud display; yet take this truth from me-- Virtue alone is true nobility!
Though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a lowborn meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident.
My great-great-grandfather was a shah back in the 1800s. Unfortunately, I don't have any gold coins or jewels to show for it.
The gentleman will please remember that when his half-civilized ancestors were hunting wild boar in Silesia, mine were princes of the earth.
Replying to a Senator who had made an anti-Semitic remark:
Noble fathers have noble children.
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Barontage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; . . .
Indeed, it may be laid down as a general principle, that the more extended the ancestry, the greater the amount of violence and vagabondism; for in ancient days those two amusements, combining a wholesome excitement with a promising means of repairing shattered fortunes, were at once the ennobling pursuit and the healthful recreation of the Quality of this land.
My ancestors are Rajputs from Jaipur, a lineage of the royal family.