Grandparents and Ancestors

Our Irish ancestors believed in magic, prayers, trickery, browbeating and bullying. I think it would be fair to sum that list up as “Irish politics.”

I’m very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch.

My grandmother is over 80 and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.

Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.

I played with my grandfather a lot when I was a kid. He was dead, but my parents had him cremated and put his ashes in an Etch-a-Sketch.

The conviction reigns that it is only through the sacrifices and accomplishments of the ancestors that the tribe exists--and that one has to pay them back with sacrifices and accomplishments; one thus recognizes a debt that constantly grows greater, since these forebears never cease, in their continued existence as powerful spirits, to accord the tribe new advantages and new strength.

What a father says to his children is not heard by the world; but it will be heard by posterity.

I don’t know who my grandfather was. I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children—and what an inhuman world, without the aged.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

We have become a grandmother.

‘Oh Grandmother! What big ears you have!’

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Pardon, old fathers.

It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.