Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own

Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own. [Lat., Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi Vix ea nostra voco.]

Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pristine pedigree, refined through ages of selective breeding and the occasional mercy culling.

It was life, and death, and all that spanned between.

It was his birthright.

Perrin had adopted the name Newark for his project, after the family's New Jersey ancestry, and if he went ahead with his town location, the ranchers laughed, the name would prove to be apt. Anybody foolish enough to actually buy the land would need an ark to reach it. Perrin ignored the jokes, ... The Centennial History of Newark.

One who is proud of ancestry is like a turnip; there is nothing good of him but that which is underground

He who boasts of his ancestry praises the merits of another