#ancestors

Our cautious ancestors, when yawning, blocked the way to the entrance of evil spirits by putting their hands before their mouths. We find a reason for the gesture in the delicacy of manner which forbids an indecent exposure. ↗

— George H. Mead

#before #blocked #cautious #delicacy #entrance

Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone. ↗

— John Ciardi

#ancestors #gone #left #money #over

Any living cell carries with it the experience of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors. ↗

— Max Delbruck

#any #billion #carries #cell #experience

Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton. ↗

— Donald Johanson

#arm #bone #brought #find #get

But if people want to swim in the Thames, if they want to take their lives into their own hands, then they should be able to do so with all the freedom and exhilaration of our woad-painted ancestors. ↗

— Boris Johnson

#ancestors #exhilaration #freedom #hands #into

Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties. ↗

— Pete Seeger

#ago #america #ancestors #came #dissenters

Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#ancestry #build #building-blocks #globe-trotting #inspiration

We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us. ↗

— Liam Callanan

#death #ghosts #liam-callanan #the-cloud-atlas #death

My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times, men would not stop to ask for directions. ↗

— Elayne Boosler

#ask #because #directions #even #forty

We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching. ↗

— Paul Tsongas

#ancestors #back #children #continuum #fundamental