Descent Inspiring Quotes

In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.

Some of us can live without a society but not without a family.

[Responding to the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce's question whether he traced his descent from an ape on his mother's or his father's side] A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who … plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.

In united families, they might sleep with half filled stomach but no one sleeps with empty stomach.

America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has ever come up with so far. Not only because we value democracy and the rights of the individual, but because we are always our own most effective voice of descent....We must never mistake disagreement between Americans on political or moral issues to be an indication of their level of patriotism. If you don't like what I say or don't agree with where I stand on certain issues, then good. I'm glad we're in America, and don't have to oppress each other over it. We're not just a nation, we're not an ethnicity. We are a dream of justice that people have had for a thousand years.

You can take the Indian out of the family, but you cannot take the family out of the Indian.

Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful instincts to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived several other, and those no small, benefits from considering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom.

The Mennonites did not intend to leave behind one site of oppression to build another in America. Mennonites therefore circulated an antislavery petition on April 18, 1688. “There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are,” they wrote. “In Europe there are many oppressed” for their religion, and “here those are oppressed” for their “black colour.” Both oppressions were wrong. Actually, as an oppressor, America “surpass[ed] Holland and Germany.” Africans had the “right to fight for their freedom.” The 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery was the inaugural antiracist tract among European settlers in colonial America. Beginning with this piece, the Golden Rule would forever inspire the cause of White antiracists. Antiracists of all races—whether out of altruism or intelligent self-interest—would always recognize that preserving racial hierarchy simultaneously preserves ethnic, gender, class, sexual, age, and religious hierarchies. Human hierarchies of any kind, they understood, would do little more than oppress all of humanity.

Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration ... and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose—as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.

Peter Friedrich, wer bin ich? Peter Frederick, who am I? German or American? The answer was neither and both. I had German blood but an American mentality. This trip allowed me to understand that a man can make his home where ever he chooses. If I wanted, I could live happily in America. My heart fought and pleaded, saying it wasn't true, that I was German, and only in Germany would I be content. In one of the few times in my life, intellect overruled emotion. Germany wasn't the key to my happiness. I couldn't deny what I had experienced, and my last hope for a key to the castle door died. International adoption destroyed the connection to my heritage. It is only conjuncture to guess how my life might have turned out under different circumstances, but there is one certainty: If I had remained in the orphanage or had been adopted by German parents, I never would have suffered the loss of my national identity. If I had to be adopted by Americans, then they should have been of German descent.

When Italians and then Poles and other Eastern Europeans followed the Irish, they became part of an American Catholic Church that was, in essence, an Irish church. As Boston Globe reporter Maureen Dezell noted in her book Irish America: Coming into Clover, 90 percent of men enrolled in American seminaries in the latter half of the nineteenth century had Irish names, while by 1900 three quarters of the American Catholic hierarchy was Irish. (Even by the 1990s, when Hispanics emerged as the biggest ethnic group in the American Catholic Church, and the Irish made up only 15 percent of the laity, a third of the priests and half of the American bishops were of Irish descent.)

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem. Matt. xx. 18. Never had there been such a going up to Jerusalem as that which Jesus here proposes to His disciples. He goes up voluntarily. The act was not enforced by any external compulsion. Jerusalem might at this time have been avoided. It was deliberately sought. It was a going up to a triumph to be reached through defeat, a coronation to be attained through ignominy and humiliation. O believer, in your walk through the world today, be strengthened, be comforted, be inspired, by the spectacle of the Captain of your salvation thus going up to Jerusalem! And remember, in all those apparently downward passages of your life, where sorrow, and it may be death, lie before you, that all such descents, made or endured in the Spirit of Jesus, are really upgoing steps, leading you to the mount of God and the resurrection glory.

In the very beginning of life, you were acquainted with the exquisite natural resources of your breath, body, and inner life. You breathed deeply into your belly. You loved your body. You were in touch with the wisdom within your own life. Over time, however, the girl-child becomes disconnected from the “home” within her. Caught in the swirls of others, twisted in the shapes of others, depleted by the demands of others, she becomes outer-directed and loses touch with herself. Her breath becomes shallow. She ignores her body. She looks to saviors outside of herself for salvation and validation, forgetting the rich resources within her. In the fullness of time, we become dizzy from swirling; our lives ache from being twisted out of shape; and our spirits become depleted from servicing others with our energy and attention. Weary, we reach out to a counselor, spiritual community, or self-help group. We are offered information, insight, and tools of support. We are inspired by the experience, strength, and hope of others who are turning toward their own lives with vulnerability, courage, and truth. Insight, information, and camaraderie point us in the right direction, but the journey begins as we turn toward our own lives and look within to re-connect to our natural resources: breath, woman-body, and inner life. Home is always waiting. It is as near as a conscious breath, conscious contact with your woman-body, and a descent into the abundant resources of your inner life. The meaning, recovery, and transformation you seek ‘out there’ is found within your own heart, mind, body, and life. It is accessed in the present moment and released into your experience with each mindful breath. Return home often—you have everything you need there.

L'attitude des modernes à l'égard du passé comporte en effet trop souvent une double erreur : d'une part, ils jugeront que telles formes ayant un contenu intemporel sont inconciliables avec les conditions mentales de ce qu'ils appellent « notre temps » ; d'autre part, ils se réfèrent volontiers, pour introduire telle réforme ou telle simplification, à ce qui a été fait dans l'Antiquité ou au Moyen Age, comme si les conditions cycliques étaient toujours les mêmes et qu'il n'y avait pas, du point de vue de la fluidité spirituelle et de l'inspiration, un appauvrissement — ou un abaissement — progressif des possibilités. La religion — car c'est d'elle qu'il s'agit dans la plupart des cas — est pareille à un arbre qui croît, qui a une racine, un tronc, des branches, des feuilles, où il n'y a pas de hasard — un chêne ne produisant jamais autre chose que des glands — et où on ne peut à l'aveuglette intervertir l'ordre de croissance ; celle-ci n'est point une « évolution » au sens progressiste du mot, bien qu'il y ait évidemment — parallèlement à la descente vers l'extériorisation et le durcissement — un déploiement sur le plan de la formulation mentale et des arts. Le soi-disant retour à la simplicité originelle est l'antipode de cette simplicité, précisément parce que nous ne sommes plus à l'origine et que, en outre, l'homme moderne est affecté d'un singulier manque du sens des proportions ; nos ancêtres ne se seraient jamais doutés qu'il suffit de voir dans une erreur « notre temps » pour lui reconnaître des droits non seulement sur les choses, mais même sur l'intelligence.

I stepped somewhat apprehensively into 2020, unaware of what was to happen, of course, thinking little about the newly-emerged coronavirus, but knowing myself to be at a tipping point in my life. I had come so very far over the years, the decades, from my birthplace in the United Kingdom, to Thailand, Japan and then back to Thailand to arrive at an age—how had I clocked up so many turns under the sun?—at which most people ask for nothing more than comfort, security and love, or at least loving kindness. Instead, I was slowly extricating myself, physically and emotionally, from a marriage that had, over the course of more than a decade, slowly, almost imperceptibly, deteriorated from complacency to conflict, from apathy to antagonism, from diversity to divergence as our respective outlooks on life first shifted and then conflicted. Instrumental in exacerbating this had been my decision to travel as and where I could after witnessing my mother’s devastating and terminal descent into dementia. For reasons which even now I cannot recall with any accuracy, the first destination for this reborn, more daring me was Tibet, thus initiating a new love affair, this time with the culture and majesty of the Himalayan swathe, and the awakening within me of a quest for the spiritual. I had, over the years, been a teacher, a lecturer, a consultant and an advisor, but I now wanted to inspire and release my verbal and photographic creativity, to capture the places I visited and the experiences I had in words and images—and if possible to have the wherewithal of sharing them with like-minded people.

There are two fundamentally different ways for the strong to bend down to the weak, for the rich to help the poor, for the more perfect life to help the “less perfect.” This action can be motivated by a powerful feeling of security, strength, and inner salvation, of the invincible fullness of one’s own life and existence. All this unites into the clear awareness that one is rich enough to share one’s being and possessions. Love, sacrifice, help, the descent to the small and the weak, here spring from a spontaneous overflow of force, accompanied by bliss and deep inner calm. Compared to this natural readiness for love and sacrifice, all specific “egoism,” the concern for oneself and one’s interest, and even the instinct of “self-preservation” are signs of a blocked and weakened life. Life is essentially expansion, development, growth in plenitude, and not “self-preservation,” as a false doctrine has it. Development, expansion, and growth are not epiphenomena of mere preservative forces and cannot be reduced to the preservation of the “better adapted.” ... There is a form of sacrifice which is a free renunciation of one’s own vital abundance, a beautiful and natural overflow of one’s forces. Every living being has a natural instinct of sympathy for other living beings, which increases with their proximity and similarity to himself. Thus we sacrifice ourselves for beings with whom we feel united and solidary, in contrast to everything “dead.” This sacrificial impulse is by no means a later acquisition of life, derived from originally egoistic urges. It is an original component of life and precedes all those particular “aims” and “goals” which calculation, intelligence, and reflection impose upon it later. We have an urge to sacrifice before we ever know why, for what, and for whom! Jesus’ view of nature and life, which sometimes shines through his speeches and parables in fragments and hidden allusions, shows quite clearly that he understood this fact. When he tells us not to worry about eating and drinking, it is not because he is indifferent to life and its preservation, but because he sees also a vital weakness in all “worrying” about the next day, in all concentration on one’s own physical well-being. ... all voluntary concentration on one’s own bodily wellbeing, all worry and anxiety, hampers rather than furthers the creative force which instinctively and beneficently governs all life. ... This kind of indifference to the external means of life (food, clothing, etc.) is not a sign of indifference to life and its value, but rather of a profound and secret confidence in life’s own vigor and of an inner security from the mechanical accidents which may befall it. A gay, light, bold, knightly indifference to external circumstances, drawn from the depth of life itself—that is the feeling which inspires these words! Egoism and fear of death are signs of a declining, sick, and broken life. ... This attitude is completely different from that of recent modern realism in art and literature, the exposure of social misery, the description of little people, the wallowing in the morbid—a typical ressentiment phenomenon. Those people saw something bug-like in everything that lives, whereas Francis sees the holiness of “life” even in a bug.

Hecate is the guardian of the crossroads of our unconscious, the hidden part of our psyches which is the source of our creativity, growth and healing. Sometimes gaining wisdom requires a descent into the underworld of our subconscious where inspiration and vision, the creative juices of renewal, are often found. Because Western culture emphasizes action and productivity, it frequently devalues those times of deep introspection. We have been conditioned to experience them as being stuck, in limbo, or as being depressed. In reality these spaces of non-activity may be part of the journey to revitalization. Hecate, if invited, acts as our guide in this deep inner work.

Healing is not a straight and narrow road that leads from darkness to light. There's no sudden epiphany to take us from despair to serenity, no orchestrated steps to move us from hurting to healed. Healing is a winding mountain road with steep climbs and sudden descents, breathtaking views and breath-stealing drop-offs, dark tunnels and blinding exposures, dead ends and endless backtracks, rest stops and break downs, sheer rock walls and panoramic vistas. Healing is a journey with no destination, because healing is the journey of every lifetime.

On pense toujours que le plus difficile dans une ascension, c'est de se hisser jusqu'au sommet, les livres ou les films ne parlent que de ça, parce que c'est le temps de la conquête et de l'exploit, la métaphore du progrès humain et de la domination de la nature, alors que tous les alpinistes vous diront que c'est de loin la descente qui représente le plus grand danger. Climax

When I was writing my novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, I became enthralled by the myth of Orpheus, the greatest poet who was also the greatest singer, the personage in whom song and story became one. You can recount the myth of Orpheus in a hundred words or less: his love for the nymph Eurydice, her pursuit by the beekeeper Aristaeus, the snakebite that killed her, her descent into hell, his pursuit of her beyond the doors of death, his attempt to rescue her, his being granted by the lord of the underworld -- as a reward for the genius of his singing -- the possibility of leading her back to life as long as he didn't look back, and his fatal backward look. And yet when you begin to delve into the story it seems almost inexhaustibly rich, for at its heart is a great triangular tension between the grandest matters of life: love, art and death. You can turn and turn the story and the triangle tells you different things. It tells you that art, inspired by love, can have a greater power than death. It tells you, contrariwise, that death, in spite of art, can defeat the power of love. And it tells you that art alone can make possible the transaction between love and death that is at the centre of all human life.

When the longing for discovery pushes you to a profound exploration of the self, the unknown becomes known, the real becomes surreal and the lowly turns sublime. It then becomes a descent into life as you journey between the valleys and mountains and beneath the ordinary, a world of extraordinary beauty is exploding inside.

Respected academic Jonathan Jansen, the inspirational rector and vice chancellor of the University of the Free State, once said that not a single minister in our Cabinet takes their child to a public school.11 He is correct. Why? All those politicians know that most government schools in South Africa – except for a handful – are nothing short of dire.

True leadership, the book says, inspires people to follow you because you serve their psychological need for purpose, value, and direction.

He lifted his chin and terror coursed through her like a paralytic. He was so much larger than Kenna. Stronger. It would’ve been nothing for him to curl his hands around her frail neck and demonstrate that strength until a final gasp of breath departed her lungs. She didn’t believe Dr. Merino was a violent man, but she believed passion inspired irrationality. Rather than strangling her, he gently tipped her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I hurt people. It’s a pattern.” “What about what you said after the funeral? That you’d never do anything like that to me. You wouldn’t hurt me.” The sentiment was laced with delicate desperation. A prayer whispered in the dark. “I wish that were true.

D. H. Trujillo is a fiction author born in Colorado of Pueblo and Mexican descent. The desert is her happy place and serves as inspiration for many of her works. She holds a bachelor of anthropology from the University of Hawai‘i and a master of forensic behavioral science from Alliant International University. She currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland, with her husband, two spooky black cats, an elder chihuahua named after jeans, and the plethora of ghosts inhabiting her 1949 home. Her debut romance novel, Lizards Hold the Sun, was released under the name Dani Trujillo

It is not the descent toward the shadow nor the rise toward the light that makes us superior, it is the endless struggle between the two where greatness of character resides." - Sanguinius

His account of the approach to the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse high in the mountains of Savoy inspired generations of artists and students to head for the wild landscapes of the south: It is six miles to the top; the road runs winding up it, commonly not six feet broad; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine trees hanging over head; on the other, a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent, that sometimes tumbling among the fragments of stone that have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is still made greater by the echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to form one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes I ever beheld.17 This is a highly influential early usage of the word ‘romantic’ to describe mountain scenery. It is also a classic instance of what Edmund Burke classified as a ‘sublime’ as opposed to a ‘beautiful’ scene, the distinction being that the sublime creates a reaction of awe with an element of fear, in this case created by the raging torrent, the noise resembling thunder, the echo from the mountain walls. For Wordsworth and Jones, as for Gray and Walpole before them, the approach to the Grande Chartreuse was one of the most ‘astonishing’ scenes that they ever beheld. Astonishment – being struck dumb with awe – was the hallmark of the sublime.

Mennonites were an Anabaptist denomination born out of the Protestant Reformation in the German- and Dutch-speaking areas of Central Europe. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, orthodox authorities lethally persecuted the Mennonites. The Mennonites did not intend to leave behind one site of oppression to build another in America. Mennonites therefore circulated an antislavery petition on April 18, 1688. “There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are,” they wrote. “In Europe there are many oppressed” for their religion, and “here those are oppressed” for their “black colour.” Both oppressions were wrong. Actually, as an oppressor, America “surpass[ed] Holland and Germany.” Africans had the “right to fight for their freedom.” The 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery was the inaugural antiracist tract among European settlers in colonial America. Beginning with this piece, the Golden Rule would forever inspire the cause of White antiracists. Antiracists of all races—whether out of altruism or intelligent self-interest—would always recognize that preserving racial hierarchy simultaneously preserves ethnic, gender, class, sexual, age, and religious hierarchies. Human hierarchies of any kind, they understood, would do little more than oppress all of humanity.

A white woman born in 1900 would have been among the first able to vote nationwide as soon as she turned twenty-one. Many immigrants of Asian descent born that same year wouldn’t have their citizenship approved until the year they turned fifty-two. An African American born at the turn of the twentieth century and living in the South may not have cast a ballot on Election Day until she was sixty-five years old.

For hundreds of years, their recorded writings—whether nuns or poets, inspired teachers or artists—have described a division, or painful restlessness, within themselves prior to a moment of illumination when a great light or descent of grace fell upon them.

This French Great Return was the precedent to more Great Christian returns, most notably the Italian Great Return to Libya in 1911: The average imagination can hardly fail to be struck by Italy's resumption of territories that formed a part of Roman Africa. It is the custom, in some critical quarters, to deny to modern Italy the proud descent from Imperial Rome which has been a natural inspiration to a reborn people; and, narrowly viewed, the denial has a sound enough basis. Ethnologically, no doubt, the modern Italians are far removed from the dominant people which founded and administered the greatest empire in history, and it may be the fact that of this race there are no true descendants. Yet, despite the admixture of foreign blood which gradually overwhelmed the original stock, the Roman tradition has inevitably persisted, and to admit the denial of Italian heirship would be to allow an unjustified predominance to the claims of strict heredity. In a sense, all nations have shared in the heritage of ancient Rome, but the legitimate heirs to its glories and traditions are those who, now weakened, now strengthened, by the infusion of alien blood, have occupied throughout the centuries the ancestral land. The Tripolitan provinces are rich in Roman remains, and history is full of allusions to the productivity of regions that are now desolate. In Roman times the Tripolitan coast strip and the Cyrenaican plateau must have been veritable gardens, and to-day the memorials of a vanished.’773