#heritage

To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#ancestors #assimilation #family #family-line #heritage

We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it. ↗

— Chögyam Trungpa

#background #confidence #cultivation #development #enlightenment

The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe. ↗

— Criss Jami

#atheism #atheist #beginning #belief #cause

He knew all the stories. His grandfather had given them to him when he sat between the old man’s knees as a child. It was a comfort, though, to hear them again. To call them to mind. All these stories that made him more than just a vintner and more than just a man who carried a spear whom other men were willing to follow. More than just a man who lay dying. The stories made him one of the People, who would never die. ↗

— Stant Litore

#heritage #stories #men

People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent. ↗

— Hugo Hamilton

#future #growing-up #growth #heritage #history

No matter what a person does to cover up and conceal themselves, when we write and lose control, I can spot a person from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina a mile away even if they make no exact reference to location. Their words are lush like the land they come from, filled with nine aunties, people named Bubba. There is something extravagant and wild about what they have to say — snakes on the roof of a car, swamps, a delta, sweat, the smell of sea, buzz of an air conditioner, Coca-Cola — something fertile, with a hidden danger or shame, thick like the humidity, unspoken yet ever-present. Often when a southerner reads, the members of the class look at each other, and you can hear them thinking, gee, I can't write like that. The power and force of the land is heard in the piece. These southerners know the names of what shrubs hang over what creek, what dogwood flowers bloom what color, what kind of soil is under their feet. I tease the class, "Pay no mind. It's the southern writing gene. The rest of us have to toil away. ↗

— Natalie Goldberg

#southern-literature #southerners #writing #literature-quotes

We have to preserve it and use it sustainably. And the short-term use of resources at the destruction of the long-term heritage of this country is not a policy that we can pursue. ↗

— Bruce Babbitt

#destruction #heritage #long-term #policy #preserve

For 180 years, we voted in English. That is the true American tradition, and this amendment is true to our heritage, not what has existed unnaturally for the last 20 years. ↗

— Spencer Bachus

#american #american tradition #english #existed #heritage

Not only the priceless heritage of our fathers, of our seamen, of our Empire builders is being thrown away in a war that serves no British interests - but our alliance leader Stalin dreams of nothing but the destruction of that heritage of our fathers? ↗

— John Amery

#away #being #british #builders #destruction

Rather than be asked to abandon one's own heritage and to adapt to the mores of the new country, one was expected to possess a treasure of foreign skills and customs that would enrich the resources of American living. ↗

— Rudolf Arnheim

#adapt #american #asked #country #customs