Great Grandfather Quotes

It's in my blood. My great-grandfather made wine and it's a tradition I want to pass on to my son. ~ Maynard James Keenan

More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather. ~ James Earl Jones

The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great-grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities of the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us, and never allow them to have control over their future. ~ Ahmadu Bello

Sophie, you saw Alice's transformation."
I nodded. "And the murder of my great-grandfather. Weird it showed me that when I've had so many other awful things happen directly to me," I said, beginning to tick them off on my fingers. "Elodie getting killed, having to kill Alice, escaping a burning building with the help of a ghost ... " And then, because both my parents looked so deflated, I added, "Oh, and this really heinous pageboy haircut in sixth grade."
A few wan smiles appeared, but I think it was just to humor me.
"Yes, but that was the act that was directly responsible for all of those other horrible events," Dad said. "Well, except for the haircut. I suspect that can be laid at your mother's door."
"James!" Mom protested, but I swear I heard affection behind it. I think Dad did, too, because his lips quirked upward briefly. ~ Rachel Hawkins

My grandmother was German. She was an immigrant, and my great grandfather fought in World War I and was stationed in France. ~ Lisa Papademetriou

As a matter of fact, we had already been warned against sliding down the marble banisters, not out of fear that we might break a leg or an arm, for that never worried our parents-which was, I think, why we never broke anything-but because they feared that since we were growing up and gaining weight, we might knock over the busts of ancestors placed by our father on the banisters at the turn of every flight of stairs. Cosimo had, in fact, once brought down a bishop, a great-great-great-grandfather, miter and all; lie was punished, and since then he had learned to brake just before reaching the turn of a flight and jump off within a hair's-breadth of running into a bust. ~ Italo Calvino

I haven't done any genealogical exploring myself, though members of my family and also of my husband's family have traced things back. I have a great grandfather on my mother's side who was a musician, and I'd like to know more about his life. ~ Kim Edwards

My great-grandfather, Sam Aykroyd, was a dentist in Kingston, Ontario, and he was also an Edwardian spiritualist researcher who was very interested in what was going on in the invisible world, the survival of the consciousness, precipitated paintings, mediumship, and trans-channeling. ~ Dan Aykroyd

My great-grandfather was a man of great vision, drive, and native intelligence, with some human flaws amplified by limited education, limited social range, and questionable influence from some of his advisers. ~ William Clay Ford, Jr.

There they lived on, those New England people, farmer lives, father and grandfather and great-grandfather, on and on without noise, keeping up tradition, and expecting, beside fair weather and abundant harvests, we did not learn what. They were contented to live, since it was so contrived for them, and where their lines had fallen. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I come from a family that has been here for almost 200 years. My ancestors started a very dangerous gunpowder business in 1802, and my great- grandfather and his father were both killed in gunpowder explosions. ~ Pete Du Pont

I studied history in college, and I've always enjoyed reading, especially political biographies, and I can state that in all my studies and all my experiences, I have come across just one truly honest politician: my great-grandfather, William Eichner. ... According to my grandmother, when he was elected to the General Assembly, he stopped going to religious services and never set foot in a church during his two terms in office, stating, "You can't serve God and politics at the same time". ~ John W. Hartmann

Thus, it comes to pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where a certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has certain planks in the floor from which the blood will not be taken out. You may scrape and scrape, as the present owner has done, or plane and plane, as his father did, or scrub and scrub, as his grandfather did, or burn and burn with strong acids, as his great-grandfather did, but, there the blood will still be - no redder and no paler - no more and no less - always just the same. ~ Charles Dickens

Cixi's lack of formal education was more than made up for by her intuitive intelligence, which she liked to use from her earliest years. In 1843, when she was seven, the empire had just finished its first war with the West, the Opium War, which had been started by Britain in reaction to Beijing clamping down on the illegal opium trade conducted by British merchants. China was defeated and had to pay a hefty indemnity.

Desperate for funds, Emperor Daoguang (father of Cixi's future husband) held back the traditional presents for his sons' brides – gold necklaces with corals and pearls – and vetoed elaborate banquets for their weddings. New Year and birthday celebrations were scaled down, even cancelled, and minor royal concubines had to subsidise their reduced allowances by selling their embroidery on the market through eunuchs. The emperor himself even went on surprise raids of his concubines' wardrobes, to check whether they were hiding extravagant clothes against his orders. As part of a determined drive to stamp out theft by officials, an investigation was conducted of the state coffer, which revealed that more "than nine million taels of silver had gone missing.

Furious, the emperor ordered all the senior keepers and inspectors of the silver reserve for the previous forty-four years to pay fines to make up the loss – whether or not they were guilty.

Cixi's great-grandfather had served as one of the keepers and his share of the fine amoun ~ Jung Chang

I do everything I do to pay tribute to my great-grandfather. ~ Nik Wallenda

I come from a line of railroad men. My great-grandfather was a surveyor for the Burlington Railroad. ~ Bill Moseley

Going back to Georgiana Drew and John Drew, and my great-grandfather Maurice Barrymore, and it was such a sort of circus of odd, interesting people that loved acting. ~ Drew Barrymore

It's a tradition my great-grandfather started almost a hundred years ago, after my father was born. He gave my father fifty newly minted silver dollars and explained that each time something really amazing happened to him, he had to return one of the dollars to the universe so that someone else could wish on it.
I smile, recalling how Patrick had once told me a story of his grandfather standing on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1936 and throwing a silver dollar into the water after his beloved Yankees won the World Series. They won it for the next three years too, and his grandfather always believed that it was his coins - good luck returned to the universe - that kept their streak alive ...
... My father always used to tell me that if you keep the coins, you throw things out of balance ... It's all about passing the luck on and thanking the world for whatever good things have happened to you. ~ Kristin Harmel

The way people behave. They refuse to admire their contemporaries, the people whose lives they share. No, but to be admired by Posterity -- people they've never met and never will -- that's what they set their hearts on. You might as well be upset at not being a hero to your great-grandfather. ~ Marcus Aurelius

My great-grandfather fought with the Colonial Army in New England in the American Revolution. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

My dad had been an actor ... not only had my dad been an actor, but his dad had been an actor, and my great-grandfather had been an actor. And who knows before then? ~ David Hyde Pierce

Yet my great-grandfather was but a water-man, looking one way and rowing another: and I got most of my estate by the same occupation. ~ John Bunyan

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white. ~ Muhammad Ali

He twisted the heavy gold ring around his finger. It had been in his family for generations, passed down to each eldest child along with the family mission of once again ushering in the Golden Age of Man.
His great-great-grandfather had been the first of their Order to make physical progress toward the ultimate goal: to free the powerful prisoners from the center of the Earth. ~ Lisa Kessler

I have a great-great-great-grandfather who was a Confederate cavalry colonel, and I still have his military composite photo on my wall. The chemicals in the photo tint have changed over the years to the point that he looks green. One of my family members apparently still has the piece of paper that listed every thing in his pocket when he got shot. ~ Anson Mount

You gotta understand, my great-grandfather was German and Irish. My grandmother was Indian, and my grandfather was African-American, so we all got a little something in us. ~ Tracy Morgan

For a moment, I thought I heard laughter, the click of one croquet ball striking another, a dog barking.
I stared at the empty yard, trying hard to see what Great-grandfather saw, but nothing shifted, nothing changed. If the Tylers were playing croquet, they were visible to him and him alone. The only dog in sight was Binky. Running across the lawn to meet him, I took the stick he carried and threw it as hard as I could. It sailed across the sky, and Binky dashed after it.
As the dog disappeared into the bushes, I looked up at the attic window and remembered the flash of white I'd seen the day I arrived--my first glimpse of Andrew. Funny to think I'd been scared. Nothing stirred in the attic now. No one watched, no one waited.
Deep in my pocket, I touched the red bull's-eye, warm as blood and twice as lucky. The marbles were mine for keeps. They were safe, and so was Andrew. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

The best description of this book is found within the title. The full title of this book is:

"This is the story my great-grandfather told my father, who then told my grandfather, who then told me about how The Mythical Mr. Boo, Charles Manseur Fizzlebush Grissham III, better known as Mr. Fizzlebush, and Orafoura are all in fact me and Dora J. Arod, who sometimes shares my pen, paper, thoughts, mind, body, and soul, because Dora J. Arod is my pseudonym, as he/it incorporates both my first and middle name, and is also a palindrome that can be read forwards or backwards no matter if you are an upright man in the eyes of God or you are upside down in a tank of water wearing purple goggles and grape jelly discussing how best to spread your time between your work, your wife, and the toasted bread being eaten by the man you are talking to who goes by the name of Dendrite McDowell, who is only wearing a towel on his head and has an hourglass obscuring his "time machine"--or the thing that he says can keep him young forever by producing young versions of himself the way I avert disaster in that I ramble and bumble like a bee until I pollinate my way through flowery situations that might otherwise have ended up being more than less than, but not equal to two short parallel lines stacked on top of each other that mathematicians use to balance equations like a tightrope walker running on a wire stretched between two white stretched limos parked on a long cloud that looks like ~ Jarod Kintz

You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he's 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you're back to 1820 already. For an American that's pretty damned good, you know? ~ Henry Louis Gates

Here are pictures of the sources for Daoist mijue "master to disciple" oral teachings, as shown in the manuals used by Daoist masters themselves. The manuals are insufficient for the casual reader to use, the oral koujue explanations given on a personal one-to-one basis are essential. After seeing how Daoists from Longhu Shan,as well as foreign ("american") Dao for $$$ have falsified their use, I am reluctant to share them in full, until a true Qingwei or Zhengyi Grade five and above master ask to see them. The Qingwei (5 thunder-vajra") Daoist seen performing the purification mudra in image #5 below (a mudra shared by Daoists, Tendai Tantric Buddhists in Japan, and Tibetan masters) said when he had seen the manuals shown in pictures 1-4. "Where is the other half of the Thunder-Vajra manual?" Then I knew that it was OK to give it to him! He gave me his address in Jiangxi province; I intend to bring the mijue manual to him on my next trip to China, as Master Zhuang asked me to do, (before his death in 1976, an order given to his maternal great grandfather by the 61st Longhu Shan master, in 1868)!
[Saso facebook post, May 7 2015] ~ Michael Saso

But the most precious research to me came from the paperwork filed on behalf of my grandparents and great-grandfather. The ship's manifest showed that they could read and write. I am still emotional when I look at those boxes checked yes. ~ Adriana Trigiani

Samuel Smiles ends his book with the following moving story of the "gentleman" general:

The gentleman is characterized by his sacrifice of self, and preference of others, in the little daily occurrences of life…we may cite the anecdote of the gallant Sir Ralph Abercromby, of whom it is related, that, when mortally wounded in the battle of Aboukir, and, to ease his pain, a soldier's blanket was placed under his head, from which he experienced considerable relief.
He asked what it was.
"It's only a soldier's blanket," was the reply.
"Whose blanket is it?" said he, half lifting himself up.
"Only one of the men's."
"I wish to know the name of the man whose blanket this is."
"It is Duncan Roy's, of the 42nd, Sir Ralph."
"Then see that Duncan Roy gets his blanket this very night."

Even to ease his dying agony the general would not deprive the private soldier of his blanket for one night.
As Samuel wrote: "True courage and gentleness go hand in hand."
It was in this family, belief system, and heritage that Walter, my great-grandfather, grew up and dared to dream. ~ Bear Grylls

In the center is Judge Theodore Sedgwick, the first of the Stockbridge Sedgwicks and a great-great-great-grandfather of Edie's and of mine, is buried under his tombstone, a high rising obelisk, and his wife Pamela is beside him. They are like the king and queen on a chessboard, and all around them like a pie are more modest stones, put in layers, back and round in a circle. The descendants of Judge Sedgwick, from generation unto generation, are all buried with their heads facing out and their feet pointing in toward their ancestor. The legend is that on Judgement Day when they arise and face the Judge, they will have to see no one but Sedgwicks. ~ Jean Stein

At that moment, the back door opened, and Great-grandfather wheeled himself outside. Slowly and carefully, Hannah stepped through the door behind him. Aunt Blythe followed, balancing a tray loaded with a pitcher of lemonade and five glasses.
"Come along, you two," Hannah called.
"Tarnation," Andrew muttered. "Am I going to have to see that jackass today?" Without letting me help, he levered himself out of the chair with his cane. "I bet Hannah woke the old coot up just to make me miserable."
When we joined the others on the porch, Great-grandfather refused to look at us. Keeping his head down, he fidgeted with the blanket on his lap.
"This is a fine way to greet me," Andrew said.
"Maybe he doesn't recognize you." Aunt Blythe bent down to peer into Great-grandfather's face. "Your cousins are here, Father. Can you say hello to Hannah and Andrew?"
"It's my house," he mumbled. "They can't have it."
Andrew looked as if he wanted to give his cousin a punch in the nose, but Hannah intervened. "We know the house is yours, Edward," she said. "Don't worry, we haven't come to take it back. Andrew and I have our own home."
Great-grandfather raised his head and stared at Hannah. "You never liked me. Neither did your brothers. I wasn't welcome in this house when you lived here. Now it's mine and you're not welcome."
Ignoring Aunt Blythe's protests, Great-grandfather wheeled himself toward the back door. "You and your Roosevelt," he muttered befo ~ Mary Downing Hahn

My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot. ~ Alan Garner

My great-grandfather, Peter O'Hara, was born in Ireland, I believe, in County Clare. His father, my great-great-grandfather, had actually come to America a generation before when times were very bad in Ireland. He worked in the Pennsylvania area and did well with horses and farming. ~ Kelli O'Hara

Fallowing the custom, my great-grandfather was married young, at fourteen, to a woman six years his senior. It was considered one of the duties of a wife to help bring up her husband. ~ Jung Chang

There they were," she went on, "the stars. And he asked himself, my great-grandfather - that boy: 'What are they? Why are they? And who am I?' as one does, sitting alone, with no one to talk to, looking at the stars. ~ Virginia Woolf

My great-grandfather, Karl Wallenda, was my biggest hero in life, my biggest inspiration behind everything I do. ~ Nik Wallenda

Apophis the god of Chaos Anubis the god of funerals and death Babi the baboon god Bast the cat goddess Bes the dwarf god Disturber a god of judgement who works for Osiris Geb the earth god Gengen-Wer the goose god Hapi the god of the Nile Heket the frog goddess Horus the war god, son of Isis and Osiris Isis the goddess of magic, wife of her brother Osiris and mother of Horus Khepri the scarab god, Ra's aspect in the morning Khonsu the moon god Mekhit minor lion goddess, married to Onuris Neith the hunting goddess Nekhbet the vulture goddess Nut the sky goddess Osiris the god of the Underworld, husband of Isis and father of Horus Ra the sun god, the god of order; also known as Amun-Ra Sekhmet the lion goddess Serqet the scorpion goddess Set the god of evil Shu the air god, great-grandfather of Anubis Sobek the crocodile god Tawaret the hippo goddess Thoth the god of knowledge ~ Rick Riordan

I've never been afraid of ghosts. I live with them daily, after all. When I look in a mirror, my mother's eyes look back at me; my mouth curls with the smile that lured my great-grandfather to the fate that was me. No, how should I fear the touch of those vanished hands, laid on me in love unknowing? How could I be afraid of those that molded my flesh, leaving their remnants to live long past the grave? ... All the time the ghosts flit past and through us, hiding in the future. We look in the mirror and see shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway. By blood and by choice, we make our own ghosts; we haunt ourselves. ~ Diana Gabaldon

To my great-grandfather I owed the advice to dispense with the education of the schools and have good masters at home instead - and to realize that no expense should be grudged for this purpose. ~ Marcus Aurelius

I live in the house my great-grandfather moved to in 1865 ... I spent all my summers here as a kid haying with my grandfather, and it was my favorite place in the world. ~ Donald Hall

It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry down too close to your own time - it is safest to speak only vaguely of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I now do. I was born without teeth - and there Richard III had the advantage of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest. But ~ Mark Twain

We will never forget those like my great-grandfather who fought at Vicksburg. ~ Roy Barnes

My great-grandfather was in the army in India, and we have photographs of my family there in full Victorian dress. They're incredibly romantic. ~ Georgina Chapman

Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy. Cotton's family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises - the freedom to vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one's life. Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole. ~ Michelle Alexander

Theo," Aunt Blythe said. "According to Father, he was a no-good rascal, but just look at that angelic little face. He couldn't have been all bad."
"I guess Great-grandfather didn't like him either."
"No, indeed." Aunt Blythe laughed. "If anything, Father disliked Theo even more than Hannah. The feeling was mutual, I'm afraid. I haven't seen either one of them since their mother died. Lord, that was more than fifty years ago."
I looked closely at the swing in the picture. "Was this taken on your porch?"
Aunt Blythe nodded. "Hannah used to live here. Father bought the house after her mother died." She pointed to the sweet-faced woman and the stern man beside her. "Great-aunt Mildred and Great-uncle Henry."
I leaned against my aunt's shoulder. "Let me guess," I said. "Great-grandfather didn't like them either."
"What a perceptive boy you are. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners. ~ Jimmy Carter

My own great-grandfather, who said simply enough, No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

My own great-grandfather suffered so much from asthma that he had to walk a mile or two behind the covered wagons crossing the plains to avoid the dust. However, he always arrived at his destination and did his share of the work. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

The Reich Youth Leader was Baldur von Schirach, a romantically minded young man and an energetic organizer, whose mother was an American and whose great-grandfather, a Union officer, had lost a leg at Bull Run; he told his American jailers at Nuremberg that he had become an anti-Semite at the age of seventeen after reading a book called Eternal Jew, by Henry Ford. ~ William L. Shirer

I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time. ~ Ann Coulter

The great-great-grandfather of my mother was probably using gelatins. ~ Jose Andres

I toss the formal dress from 1905 onto the chair next to him. He glances up, removing the headphones.
"Did you decide to do a bit of shopping in London?"
I give him a wry smile. "Does this look like something I'd buy? Your great-grandfather picked it out. ~ Rysa Walker

The gateway to freedom ... was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'. ~ Chuck Berry

It all begins with your great-grandfather, Sir Hugo Baskerville, who was a right bastard, and no denying. ~ G.S. Denning

Hezekiah Pendergast," Constance continued, "was the great-great-grandfather of Aloysius - and a first-rate mountebank. He began his career as a snake-oil salesman for traveling medicine shows and, over time, devised his own 'medicine': Hezekiah's Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative. ~ Douglas Preston

You surround the dead with veneration and memory, you dream of immortality, and in your myths and legends there's always someone being resurrected, conquering death. But were your esteemed late great-grandfather really to suddenly rise from the grave and order a beer, panic would ensue. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

My great-great grandfather and I were the best of friends, although we never met ~ Raji Singh

We realize, though, because we must, that remembrance is finite. It crosses only so many generations before it fades to indistinction. One man remembers his father and perhaps his grandfather and the details of the lives that were lived. But it's harder to see further back in time. I know the name of my great-grandfather, but our living time did not intersect. We did not walk the earth at the same time. Thus, to me he's a photograph; a story I heard my grandfather tell. He's not a life I remember. And my children may not know him at all, unless by chance they can find him in a book. In time, he will be forgotten entirely, just as we all will with enough revolutions of the earth around the slowly expiring sun. Each fragile heart now beating will one day stop ... We are little more than one tree's growth of leaves in hillside forest. We will enjoy our brief moment in the sun, only to fall away with all the other to make way for the next bright young generation. ~ Phillip Lewis

When Dad pulled up in front of the house, the three of us sat still for a moment and stared at the gloomy pile of bricks my great-aunt called home. Up close, it looked even worse than it had from a distance. Ivy clung to the walls, spreading over windows and doors. A wisteria vine heavy with bunches of purple blossoms twisted around the porch columns. Paint peeled, loose shutters banged in the wind, slates from the roof littered the overgrown lawn.
Charles Addams would have loved it. So would Edgar Allan Poe. But not me. No, sir, definitely not me. Just looking at the place made my skin prickle.
Dad was the first to speak. "This is your ancestral home, Drew," he said, once more doing his best to sound excited. "It was built by your great-great-grandfather way back in 1865, right after the Civil War. Tylers have lived here ever since."
While Dad babbled about family history and finding your roots and things like that, I let my thoughts drift to Camp Tecumseh again. Maybe Martin wasn't so bad after all, maybe he and I could have come to terms this summer, maybe we--
My fantasies were interrupted by Great-aunt Blythe. Flinging the front door open, she came bounding down the steps. The wind ballooned her T-shirt and swirled her gray hair. If she spread her arms, she might fly up into the sky like Mary Poppins. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

Cat's Dream"

How neatly a cat sleeps,
sleeps with its paws and its posture,
sleeps with its wicked claws,
and with its unfeeling blood,
sleeps with all the rings--
a series of burnt circles--
which have formed the odd geology
of its sand-colored tail.

I should like to sleep like a cat,
with all the fur of time,
with a tongue rough as flint,
with the dry sex of fire;
and after speaking to no one,
stretch myself over the world,
over roofs and landscapes,
with a passionate desire
to hunt the rats in my dreams.

I have seen how the cat asleep
would undulate, how the night
flowed through it like dark water;
and at times, it was going to fall
or possibly plunge into
the bare deserted snowdrifts.
Sometimes it grew so much in sleep
like a tiger's great-grandfather,
and would leap in the darkness over
rooftops, clouds and volcanoes.

Sleep, sleep cat of the night,
with episcopal ceremony
and your stone-carved moustache.
Take care of all our dreams;
control the obscurity
of our slumbering prowess
with your relentless heart
and the great ruff of your tail. ~ Pablo Neruda

I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on! ~ Dick Van Dyke

You mentioned that Palermo, the part of Buenos Aires where you were brought up, had been a violent place full of bohemians and bandits. There they had two names for the knife, 'the blade' and 'the slicer'. The two names described the same object, but 'the blade' was the thing itself, and 'the slicer' described its function. 'The blade' could fit in the hand even of a sickly child shut up in his father's library, 'the blade' could be any of the superannuated daggers and swords belonging to his warrior grandfather or great-grandfather and displayed on the walls of his house, but 'the slicer', the knife in the hand slicing back and forth, in and out, existed only in his imagination, in a fascinating world of rapid settlings of accounts and duels over honor, an insult or a woman, in dark street where you never went, where no writer went, except in the literature he wrote.

'I've always felt that in order to be a great writer, one should have the experience of life at sea, which is why Conrad and Melville and, in a way, Stevenson, who ended his days in the South Seas, were better than all of us, Vogelstein. At sea, a writer flees from the minor demons and faces only the definitive ones. A character in Conrad says that he has a horror of ports because, in port, ships rot and men go to the devil. He meant the devils of domesticity and incoherence, the small devils of terra firma. But I think that having experience of "the slicer" would give a writer the same sensation as g ~ Luis Fernando Verissimo

I don't have a traditional design background, but it's inherent to me. My father was in the fabric industry, and even my grandfather and my great-grandfather were lace manufacturers. ~ Stacey Bendet

Funnel

The family story tells, and it was told true,
of my great-grandfather who begat eight
genius children and bought twelve almost-new
grand pianos. He left a considerable estate
when he died. The children honored their
separate arts; two became moderately famous,
three married and fattened their delicate share
of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was
a concert pianist. She had a notable career
and wore cropped hair and walked like a man,
or so I heard when prying a childhood car
into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan.
One died a pinafore child, she stays her five
years forever. And here is one that wrote-
I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive
words and scratch out my short marginal notes
and finger my accounts.
back from that great-grandfather I have come
to tidy a country graveyard for his sake,
to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun
and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake.
I like best to think of that Bunyan man
slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale
for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan
of culture to do it big. On this same scale
he built seven arking houses and they still stand.
One, five stories up, straight up like a square
box, still dominates its coastal edge of land.
It is rented cheap in the summer musted air
to sneaker-footed families who pad through
its ro ~ Anne Sexton

I bring a copy of 'Dracula' with me wherever I go, the book. It's my favorite book in the world, it's absolutely incredible. My great-great grandfather was the guy who printed the first edition, so he's the first person to ever put 'Dracula' on the written page. ~ Jack Reynor

The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a Pirate. ~ Bernard Williams

People can't believe how hard I work ... I love it. I think it just runs through my veins. My great-grandfather was a bellboy and had a dream to do a hotel chain, so I think I get it from him. ~ Paris Hilton

I was born in the small city of Hobart in Tasmania, Australia, in 1948. My parents were family physicians. My grandfather and great grandfather on my mother's side were geologists. ~ Elizabeth Blackburn

My mother's father was from Brazil - a painter, and not a famous one - and was always broke. But he was a free spirit, a great grandfather. ~ Claire Denis

Holy crap, Caleb! You're my uncle." Nick
"No!" Caleb
"It's worse. He's the half-brother of your great-grandfather." Kody
"You're not helping." Caleb
"No, but I'm entertaining myself at your adorable expense." Kody
"Yeah, y'all are missing the important fact. To a Cajun, that makes him my uncle." Nick
"Great. I always wanted to be a monkey's uncle. Nice to know I finally succeeded." Caleb ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

One hundred years ago my great-grandfather thought women shouldn't vote. He was absolutely certain about that, and I'm absolute certain he was wrong. Two hundred years ago my great-great-great=great grandfather believed that white men should own black men. He was absolutely certain about that, and I am certain that he was wrong. I'm humble because I don't know what I'm wrong about today. I'll speak with confidence and I'll speak with passion, but I won't speak with certainty. ~ Tony Jones

The family story tells, and it was told true,
of my great-grandfather who begat eight
genius children and bought twelve almost new
grand pianos. He left a considerable estate
when he died. ~ Anne Sexton

Whatever happened in those more than one hundred years, from the time my great-great-great grandfather studied law to the time when my own father took his bar exam in 1989, I may never know. Perhaps it was just greed and the good, old-fashion corruption that comes with power. The Drexlers have moved from the fight for human rights to the fight for corporations and wealthy individuals. We file their taxes, write their contracts, clean up their messes. As I see it, we have become little more than glorified Public Relations reps ~ Gwenn Wright

...He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively is he must.
He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional.
He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march.
He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient.
...He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cool his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts.
...He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low.
He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands.
He can save your life- or take it, because that is his job. He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed.
He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to "square-away" those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking.
...Just as did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting ~ Sarah Palin

I'm dying of AIDS, but I'm dying by accident. I didn't choose, it was a mistake. I thought it was a white's or homosexual's or monkey's or druggie's sickness. I was born a Tutsi, it's written on my identity card, but I'm a Tutsi by accident. I didn't choose, that was a mistake too. My great-grandfather learned from the whites that the Tutsis were superior to the Hutus. He was Hutu. He did everything possible so his children and grandchildren would become Tutsis. So here I am, a Hutu-Tutsi and victim of AIDS, possessor of all the sicknesses that are going to destroy us. Look at me, I'm your mirror, your double who's rotting from the inside. I'm dying a bit earlier than you, that's all. ~ Gil Courtemanche

I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish. ~ Sebastian Coe

I make a great fried egg sandwich. Want to try it?"
Chloe stared at her with an encouraging smile until Josey finally laughed and nodded. "Okay."
"Great!" Chloe put on a pair of disposable gloves, then she took butter and two eggs from the under-the-counter fridge. "Go ahead and take a business card. You can call me here if you want. And the bottom number is my cell." She plopped a pat of butter onto the grill. When the butter melted, she cracked the eggs into it, close enough for their whites to merge. While they sizzled, she buttered two slices of sourdough bread and put them on the grill.
"I didn't know this place was called Red's," Josey said, reading the card.
Chloe smiled when she thought of her great-grandfather. "Another family tradition. My great-grandfather had red hair. So did my mother." Chloe sprinkled the eggs with salt and pepper and a pinch of dill, then turned them over with her spatula. She flipped the quickly toasting bread too. She'd spent her childhood watching her great-grandfather do this, and here at the shop was the only time she felt him near anymore. "Do you want this for here or to go?"
"To go."
Chloe sprinkled a little more salt and pepper on the eggs, made sure the yolks had firmed ever so slightly, then topped them with cheese. She let the cheese melt before scooping the eggs up and putting them on the buttered sourdough. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

It's going to be an emotional time for me to see where my great grandfather ministered. It's going to be great to see the fruit of his labor. ~ Will Graham

The family on my mom's side, their whole business is inventing and pitching stuff. My grandfather is in infomercials. He's a pitchman, so if you're ever watching TV late at night, you'll probably see him pitching knives. My great-grandfather also invented the plastic cheese grater. ~ Ashley Tisdale

So that means you are almost old enough to be my grandfather. Raj laughed, Your great, great, grandfather, more likely, but whose counting? ~ D.B. Reynolds

You, sir, are an idiot! Your father was an idiot! Your grandfather was an idiot! And while I've never met your great grandfather, I'm sure that he was an idiot too since idiocy like yours is so incredibly vast that it can't possibly be due to just the environment. It would need a strong genetic determinant since no environment could ever produce an idiot as big as you! ~ L.G. Estrella

I'm sorry, you just remind me of someone. (Rose) Old boyfriend? (Gallagher) No, my great-grandfather. (Rose) That's not particularly flattering. I thought I looked rather good for my age. (Gallagher) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons - but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world - a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring - this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else - but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre pe ~ Carson McCullers

The story of his great-grandfather ... was his own story, too. ~ Kelly Cherry

From my great-grandfather: not to have attended schools for the public; to have had good teachers at home, and to realize that this is the sort of thing on which one should spend lavishly. ~ Marcus Aurelius

They were indeed what was known as 'old money', which meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds which had originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. Funny, that: a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and rogue was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of. ~ Terry Pratchett

Ethan got some books out of an old trunk. They were history books, some passed down from his great-grandfather Tom through his grandfather Jeb and father Andrew. Ethan expected that he'd pass them on to his own child, one day. History and family trees had always been very important to the Fortner family. ~ C.G. Faulkner

DUMBLEDORE: How was it?
NEWT: They're still convinced that you sent me to New York.
DUMBLEDORE: You told them I didn't?
NEWT: Yes. Even though you did.
A beat. DUMBLEDORE inscrutable, NEWT wanting answers.
NEWT: You told me where to find that trafficked Thunderbird, Dumbledore. You knew that I would take him home and you knew I'd have to take him through a Muggle port.
DUMBLEDORE: Well, I've always felt an affinity with the great magical birds. There's a story in my family that a phoenix will come to any Dumbledore who is in desperate need. They say my great-great-grandfather had one, but that it took flight when he died, never to return.
NEWT: With all due respect, I don't believe for a minute that's why you told me about the Thunderbird. ~ J.K. Rowling

I've never cheated on a lover. I'm faithful, always. But the war comes before anyone's feelings. Every time.
Wow. Battle before love. Without a doubt, he was the most unromantic male she'd ever met. Even more so than her great-grandfather, who had laughingly burned her great-grandmother to death after she'd given birth to Gwen's grandmother. ~ Gena Showalter

My great-grandfather was a coal miner, who worked in Pennsylvania mines when carts were pulled by mules and mines were lit by candles. Mining was very dangerous work then. ~ Tim Murphy

Fatness is a byproduct of the leisurely life your hard-working ancestors and the greatest minds of the Western world have been working to create for millennia They wanted you to have a life of plenty, a life without backbreaking work. Your great-great-great-grandfather would weep with joy at the sight of you half-conscious on a couch, having just shoveled a pile of fried noodles straight out of the takeout carton into your mouth after a busy day organizing the office's fantasy football league Surely my descendant has become a king! ~ Martin Cizmar

It's pretentious to say, but my art is like a little Zen story, a story with a question mark at the end. People can take from it what they need. If somebody says, "Your art is very funny," I say, "You are totally right." If somebody says, "Your art is very sad," I say, "You are totally right." In Japan they say, "Your art is very Japanese, you even look Japanese.Your great-grandfather was most surely a Japanese man." And I say, "You are totally right." ~ Christian Boltanski

Writing is like making love, editing is like giving your great grandfather a sponge bath. ~ Midnight Taylor

We took the long way back toward his house and drove past the northernmost point of the ranch just as the sun was beginning to set. "That's so pretty," I exclaimed as I beheld the beauty of the sky.
Marlboro Man slowed to a stop and put his pickup in park. "It is, isn't it?" he replied, looking over the land on which he'd grown up. He'd lived there since he was four days old, had worked there as a child, had learned how to be a rancher from his dad and grandfather and great-grandfather. He'd learned how to build fences and handle animals and extinguish prairie fires and raise cattle of all colors, shapes, and sizes. He'd helped bury his older brother in the family cemetery near his house, and he'd learned to pick up and go on in the face of unspeakable tragedy and sadness. This ranch was a part of him. His love for it was tangible.
We got out of the pickup and sat on the back, holding hands and watching every second of the magenta sunset as it slowly dissipated into the blackness underneath. The night was warm and perfectly still--so still we could hear each other breathing. And well after the sun finally dipped below the horizon and the sky grew dark, we stayed on the back of the pickup, hugging and kissing as if we hadn't seen each other in ages. The passion I felt was immeasurable.
"I have something to tell you," I said as the butterflies in my gut kicked into overdrive. ~ Ree Drummond

The fox speaks with the hurricane and says, "I need to travel far and fast. Can you take me?" The hurricane regards the puny fox with its huge, calm eye and asks, "What can you do for me?" "Why, I will let you whisper your dreams to me." "But I must kill whatever I carry. You are a living thing and do not wish to die." "If you do not kill me, I will listen to your inmost self, and tell all the animals, that they may feel sympathy for you." "What do I care for sympathy? I am all-powerful." "Yes, but someday, your winds will die, and my kits will tell this tale even when you are gone, of the time great-great-great-grandfather fox was carried by the winds and lived and learned their secrets." "But then they will not be afraid of me, and what good am I if I do not inspire fear?" "Oh, no living thing could ever be so strong they would not fear you. I give you something more. I give you a voice throughout time that is more than a wordless bellow of rage. ~ Greg Bear

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. ~ Sarah Shahi

I'm inspired every day by the great captains of industry and enlightened entrepreneurs like my great-great-grandfather and founder of Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, who personally knew all his workers and gave so much to this country, or Adriano Olivetti, unique and innovative in every way. ~ Lapo Elkann