Inherited Traits Quotes

Haven't you ever heard that modesty is an attractive trait?" "Only from ugly people," Jace confided. "The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me." He winked at the girls, who giggled and hid behind their hair.

I was blessed with another trait I inherited from my mother, her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma, but I don't hold onto the trauma. I never let the memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think too much about the ass kicking your mom gave you or the ass kicking that life gave you, you’ll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It’s better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on. You’ll have a few bruises and they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s ok. But after a while, the bruises fade and they fade for a reason. Because now, it’s time to get up to some shit again.

Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. "Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you." Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. "Of course they are," he said. "I am stunningly attractive." "Haven't you ever heard that modesty is an attractive trait?" "Only from ugly people," Jace confided. "The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me.

The emotions, traits, and behaviors we reject in our parents will likely live on in us. It’s our unconscious way of loving them, a way to bring them back into our lives.

The drug of love was no escape, for in its coils lie latent dreams of greatness which awaken when men and women fecundate each other deeply. Something is always born of man and woman lying together and exchanging the essences of their lives. Some seed is always carried and opened in the soil of passion. The fumes of desire are the womb of man's birth and often in the drunkeness of caresses history is made, and science, and philosophy. For a woman, as she sews, cooks, embraces, covers, warms, also dreams that the man taking her will be more than a man, will be the mythological figure of her dreams, the hero, the discoverer, the builder....Unless she is the anonymous whore, no man enters woman with impunity, for where the seed of man and woman mingle, within the drops of blood exchanged, the changes that take place are the same as those of great flowing rivers of inheritance, which carry traits of character from father to son to grandson, traits of character as well as physical traits. Memories of experience are transmitted by the same cells which repeated the design of a nose, a hand, the tone of a voice, the color of an eye. These great flowing rivers of inheritance transmitted traits and carried dreams from port to port until fulfillment, and gave birth to selves never born before....No man and woman know what will be born in the darkness of their intermingling; so much besides children, so many invisible births, exchanges of soul and character, blossoming of unknown selves, liberation of hidden treasures, buried fantasies...

I argued that talking is a female trait and that I would do my best to keep it under control, but that I would never be able to break myself of the habit, since my mother talked as much as I did, if not more, and that there's not much you can do about inherited traits.

Gaze detection, it’s called—our ability to sense when someone is observing us. An entire system of the human brain is devoted to this genetic inheritance from our ancestors, who relied on the trait to avoid becoming an animal’s prey.

Conformity is not an admirable trait. Conformity is a copout. It threatens self-awareness. It can lead groups to enforce rigid and arbitrary rules.

I didn't know what I wanted to Be...A sense that I had permanently botched things already, embarked on the trip without the map. and it scared me too, that I might end up as a mother of 3 working in a psychiatrist's office, or renting surfboards...I guess I saw their lives as failed somehow, absent of the Big Win...What is fate was an inherited trait? What if luck came through the genetic line, and the ability to "succeed" at your chosen "direction" was handed down, just like the family china? Maybe I was destined to be a weed too.

Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while.

Dear Son, I would call you by name, but I’m waiting for your mother to decide. I only hope she is joking when she calls you Albert Dalbert. For weeks now I have watched your mother zealously gather her tokens for this box. She’s so afraid of you not knowing anything about her, and it bothers me greatly that you’ll never know her strength firsthand. I’m sure by the time you read this, you’ll know everything I do about her. But you’ll never know her for yourself and that pains me most of all. I wish you could see the look on her face whenever she talks to you. The sadness she tries so hard to hide. Every time I see it, it cuts through me. She love you so much. You’re all she talks about. I have so many orders from her for you. I’m not allowed to make you crazy the way I do your Uncle Chris. I’m not allowed to call the doctors every time you sneeze and you are to be allowed to tussle with your friends without me having a conniption that someone might bruise you. Nor am I to bully you about getting married or having kids. Ever. Most of all, you are allowed to pick your own car at sixteen. I’m not supposed to put you in a tank. We’ll see about that one. I refuse to promise her this last item until I know more about you. Not to mention, I’ve seen how other people drive on the roads. So if you have a tank, sorry. There’s only so much changing man my age can do. I don’t know what our futures will hold. I only hope that when all is said and done, you are more like your mother than you are like me. She’s a good woman. A kind woman. Full of love and compassion even though her life has been hard and full of grief. She bears her scars with a grace, dignity, and humor that I lack. Most of all, she has courage the likes of which I haven’t witnessed in centuries. I hope with every part of me that you inherit all her best traits and none of my bad ones. I don’t really know what more to say. I just thought you should have something of me in here too. Love, Your father (Wulf)

Evolution is central to the understanding of life, including human life. Like all living things, we are outcomes of natural selection; we got here because we inherited traits that allowed our ancestors to survive, find mates, and reproduce. This momentous fact explains our deepest strivings: why having a thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth, why it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, why we do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light

I was blessed with another trait I inherited from my mother: her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma, but I don’t hold on to the trauma. I never let the memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think too much about the ass-kicking your mom gave you, or the ass-kicking that life gave you, you’ll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It’s better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on. You’ll have a few bruises and they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s okay.

What a job, to raise someone from birth to adulthood, bestowing upon them your knowledge and your values and, despite your best intentions, any number of traits you've inherited yourself. What a loaded task, to make every move, every day, in such a way that the impressionable larva-person in your home will see your example, process it into something with herself, and grow layers of muscle and soul over it until she is a fully developed human being. And all the while, the little person you're nurturing is fighting you - spitting out the broccoli, not wearing the helmet, rolling her eyes at your carefully chosen words of advice - and you become constantly worn down even as you pour your energies into loving her.

After a certain age, and even if we develop in quite different ways, the more we become ourselves, the more our family traits are accentuated.

You’re protective,” Nash commented, “and you seem like you’d fight dirty, and if there’s one thing I respect, it’s those particular traits in combination.

Jeanette has wondered whether loss unspoken becomes an inherited trait.

And [she] has wondered whether loss unspoken becomes an inherited trait. — Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt (Flatiron Books; 1st edition (March 30, 2021)

While average finger number is an inherited trait, the heritability of finger number is low—genes don’t explain individual differences much.

I argued that talking is a female trait and that I would do my best to keep it under control, but that I would never be able to break myself of the habit, since my mother talked as much as I did, if not more, and that there’s not much you can do about inherited traits.

The Transmuters had built a structure that dwarfed universes, but touched each one only lightly. They hadn’t turned whole worlds to rubble, they hadn’t reshaped galaxies in their image. Having evolved on some distant, finite world, they’d inherited the most valuable survival trait of all. Restraint.

Medical conditions: (1) Sleep problems, possibly inherited from grandfather. (2) Hospital phobia. (3) Bookworm disease. (4) Possible addiction to watching old Columbo, Midsomer Murders, and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries episodes. Personality traits: Shy but curious. Occasionally cowardly. Excellent with details. Good observer.

A final point is the fact that discrimination based on presumed inborn and immutable characteristics (race) tends to be stronger and more inflexible than ethnic discrimination which is not based on ‘racial’ differences. Members of a presumed race cannot change their assumed inherited traits, while ethnic groups can change their culture and, ultimately,

hate housework. It's in my genes, a trait inherited from my mother who claimed that a tidy house was the sign of an empty life.

It is a joy for me to have a son who has inherited the main traits of my personality: the ability to rise above mere existence by sacrificing one’s self through the years for an impersonal goal.

Men always think they’re hot. It’s like an inheritable trait attached to the Y-chromosome.” She switched to lecture mode, which was a definite weakness of his. “Even fat, ugly guys think they’re hot, whereas amazingly gorgeous women worry about not being perfect or having stomachs that aren’t taut as drums.” He shrugged. “So I’m fat, ugly, and hot.” “And my stomach is taut as a drum.” He

If genes strongly influence average levels of a trait, that trait is strongly inherited. If genes strongly influence the extent of variability around that average level, that trait has high heritability.

Human society has surrendered for seventy centuries to corrupt laws and is no longer able to perceive the true meaning of the sublime, primary, and eternal codes of behaviour. Human vision has become accustomed to looking at the light of feeble candles and can no longer stare at the light of the sun. Each generation has inherited the psychological diseases and maladies of the others, and so these have become universal. They have become attributes inseparable from humanity, so that people no longer look upon them as diseases but consider them natural and noble qualities revealed by God to Adam. And when a person appears among them who lacks these traits, they see that individual as flawed and deprived of spiritual perfections. ... They reckon the upright as criminals and those with self respect as rebels.

We face no such difficulty if we see that what is being transmitted genetically is not ADD or its equally ill-mannered and discombobulating relatives, but sensitivity. The existence of sensitive people is an advantage for humankind because it is this group that best expresses humanity’s creative urges and needs. Through their instinctual responses the world is best interpreted. Under normal circumstances, they are artists or artisans, seekers, inventors, shamans, poets, prophets. There would be valid and powerful evolutionary reasons for the survival of genetic material coding for sensitivity. It is not diseases that are being inherited but a trait of intrinsic survival value to human beings. Sensitivity is transmuted into suffering and disorders only when the world is unable to heed the exquisitely tuned physiological and psychic responses of the sensitive individual.

But I was blessed with another trait I inherited from my mother: her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma, but I don’t hold on to the trauma. I never let the memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think too much about the ass-kicking your mom gave you, or the ass-kicking that life gave you, you’ll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It’s better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on. You’ll have a few bruises and they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s okay. But after a while the bruises fade, and they fade for a reason—because now it’s time to get up to some shit again.

Scientists have found that nomads who inherited the form of a particular gene linked to extroversion (specifically, to novelty-seeking) are better nourished than those without this version of the gene. But in settled populations, people with this same gene form have poorer nutrition. The same traits that make a nomad fierce enough to hunt and to defend livestock against raiders may hinder more sedentary activities like farming, selling goods at the market, or focusing at school.

QUIRK THEORY: Many of the differences that cause a student to be excluded in school are the same traits or real-world skills that others will value, love, respect, or find compelling about that person in adulthood and outside of the school setting.

Philip had an unfortunate trait; from shyness or from some atavistic inheritance of the cave-dweller, e always dislike people on first acquaintance; and it was not till he became used to them that he got over his first impression. It made him difficult of access.

Within each species some individuals leave more surviving offspring than others, so that the inheritable traits (genes) of the reproductively successful become more numerous in the next generation. This is natural selection: the non-random differential reproduction of genes.

Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an ineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of drowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty through the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in "taking care" of his wife, continually harassed by the idea that he didn't and couldn't understand her.

There is a significant hereditary contribution to ADD but I do not believe any genetic factor is decisive in the emergence of ADD traits in any child. Genes are codes for the synthesis of the proteins that give a particular cell its characteristic structure and function. They are, as it were, alive and dynamic architectural and mechanical plans. Whether the plan becomes realized depends on far more than the gene itself. It is determined, for the most part, by the environment. To put it differently, genes carry potentials inherent in the cells of a given organism. Which of multiple potentials become expressed biologically is a question of life circumstances. Were we to adopt the medical model — only temporarily, for the sake of argument — a genetic explanation by itself would still be unsuitable. Medical conditions for which genetic inheritance are fully or even mostly responsible, such as muscular dystrophy, are rare. “Few diseases are purely genetic,” says Michael Hayden, a geneticist at the University of British Columbia and a world-renowned researcher into Huntington’s disease. “The most we can say is that some diseases are strongly genetic.” Huntington’s is a fatal degeneration of the nervous system based on a single gene that, if inherited, will almost invariably cause the disease. But not always. Dr. Hayden mentions cases of persons with the gene who live into ripe old age without any signs of the disease itself. “Even in Huntington’s, there must be some protective factor in the environment,” Dr. Hayden says.

Over the generations, we have bred and inbred our canine companions to the point of disease and deformity. One analysis of popular dog breeds turned up a total of 396 inherited diseases affecting the canines; each breed included in the analysis had been linked to at least four, and as many as seventy-seven, different hereditary afflictions… In some cases, these disorders are nasty side effects of a small gene pool, of generations of breeding related dogs or relying on just a few popular sires. In others, they’re due to intentional selection for the exaggerated physical traits prized by kennel clubs and dog show judges.

As he grew, the young Prince became very dear to the Spider Mage. He had his mother's charm and grace, without her volatile nature. He had his father's intellect, without his anger and sullenness. And he had a kind and loving heart, which longed for one thing only: for his parents to love each other, as he loved them both.

EVOLUTION RESTS ON three steps: (a) certain biological traits are inherited by genetic means; (b) mutations and gene recombination produce variation in those traits; (c) some of those variants confer more “fitness” than others. Given those conditions, over time the frequency of more “fit” gene variants increases in a population.

Inheritance has recently fallen out of favor as a programming design solution in many programming languages because it’s often at risk of sharing more code than necessary. Subclasses shouldn’t always share all characteristics of their parent class but will do so with inheritance. This can make a program’s design less flexible. It also introduces the possibility of calling methods on subclasses that don’t make sense or that cause errors because the methods don’t apply to the subclass. In addition, some languages will only allow a subclass to inherit from one class, further restricting the flexibility of a program’s design. For these reasons, Rust takes a different approach, using trait objects instead of inheritance.

There is no “grand designer” who orchestrates infections, plagues, or pandemics or engineered our defenses to them. All these mechanisms that we attribute to a battle between good and evil are in actuality biological traits that we have inherited from preexisting populations. Therefore the interactions we are witnessing (infection, inflammation, phagocytosis) are based on previously established conditions of coexistence, and we should not expect to find any sort of unique perfection in our immune system. After all, these systems are not at some end point of evolution; they are still evolving. Rather we should expect to find ancient cellular systems from distant ancestors that have come together to work synergistically.

Charat Singh's generous promise had called forth that trait of servility in Bakha which he had inherited from his forefathers, the weakness of the down-trodden, the helplessness of the poor and the indigent, suddenly receiving help, the passive contentment of the bottom dog suddenly illuminated by the prospect of fulfilment of a secret and long-cherished desire.

Other researchers think that evolutionary transformations are best studied by the comparison of embryonic development and its underlying genetic causes. The conceptual justification for that approach is the claim that what is inherited from the parents and ancestors are not adult traits but rather developmental programs that regulate the development of adult traits.

scientists have discovered that chromosomal DNA—the DNA responsible for transmitting physical traits, such as the color of our hair, eyes, and skin—surprisingly makes up less than 2 percent of our total DNA.14 The other 98 percent consists of what is called noncoding DNA (ncDNA), and is responsible for many of the emotional, behavioral, and personality traits we inherit.

Underlying or overall social mobility rates are much lower than those typically estimated by sociologists or economists. The intergenerational correlation in all societies for which we construct surname estimates - medieval England, modern England, the United States, India, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Chile, and even egalitarian Sweden - is between 0.7 and 0.9, much higher than conventionally estimated. Social status is inherited as strongly as any biological trait, such as height.

Besides, we now know that virtually all the evidence purporting to show how parental influences shape our character is deeply flawed. There is indeed a correlation between abusing children and having been abused as a child, but it can be entirely accounted for by inherited personality traits. The children of abusers inherit their persecutor’s characteristics. Properly controlled for this effect, studies leave no room for nurture determinism at all. The stepchildren of abusers, for instance, do not become abusers.

When I look back on my life I realize I was very sick for a long time. Sitting here in good health, I find myself crying. I do that sometimes. I am very sensitive. My dear son Jayden, who many know as Fox0r Jr., inherited that trait from me. I see it in him already. Jaxson is confident. Owen is sweet and loving. He is also spry and cunning. Finley is bold. Finley is also a stirring and adventurous child. We have laughed together. We have cried together. We have smiled together. My sons, next to Jesus, are my greatest inspiration.

When a member of the community and a human procreate (it is possible, though even more difficult than for the community in general, and they already have a low fertility rate), the baby is never human. The other species always breeds true—and I don’t just mean that the child inherits those traits. There is no human genetic matter at all. All the research I’ve read seems to indicate that it’s a result of magic—that since community population is so much lower than human, it’s magic’s way of ensuring the other species aren’t bred out of existence.

The real key to human gene mapping, Botstein had realized, was not finding the gene, but finding the humans. If a large-enough family bearing a genetic trait-any trait-could be found, and if that trait could be correlated with any of the variant markers spread across the genome, then gene mapping would become a trivial task. If all the members of a family affected by cystic fibrosis inevitably "co-inherited" some variant DNA marker, call it Variant-X, located on the tip of chromosome seven, then the cystic fibrosis gene had to sit in proximity to this location.

I was having trouble making sense of all that Rosie was saying, doubtless due to the effects of the alcohol and her perfume. However, she had given me an opportunity to keep the conversation on safe ground. The inheritance of common genetically influenced traits such as eye colour is more complex than is generally understood, and I was confident that I could speak on the topic for long enough to occupy the remainder of our journey. But I realised that this was a defensive action and impolite to Rosie who had risked considerable embarrassment and damage to her relationship with Stefan for my benefit.

Travelling in other’s shoes is a complex process. Everyone carries loads of inherited virtues and then, heaps of experience acquired while travelling their own exclusive path of life. One’s personality, particularly the way one thinks, beholds both inborn traits and learned knowledge. Unless one is born to the same parents as the other, exactly at same time, beholding same blend of inherent traits and travelled the same path the other has travelled so far—a biological and pragmatic impossibility—it is imprudent to claim having knowledge of other’s thought process. One’s uniqueness is not constrained to the physical form, but is pertinent, too, to intellectual, emotional and spiritual forms.

The existence of sensitive people is an advantage for humankind because it is this group that best expresses humanity’s creative urges and needs. Through their instinctual responses the world is best interpreted. Under normal circumstances, they are artists or artisans, seekers, inventors, shamans, poets, prophets. There would be valid and powerful evolutionary reasons for the survival of genetic material coding for sensitivity. It is not diseases that are being inherited but a trait of intrinsic survival value to human beings. Sensitivity is transmuted into suffering and disorders only when the world is unable to heed the exquisitely tuned physiological and psychic responses of the sensitive individual.

What a job, to raise someone from birth to adulthood, bestowing upon them your knowledge and your values and, despite your best intentions, any number of traits you’ve inherited yourself. What a loaded task, to make every move, every day, in such a way that the impressionable larva-person in your home will see your example, process it into something within herself, and grow layers of muscle and soul over it until she is a fully developed human being. And all the while, the little person you’re nurturing is fighting you—spitting out the broccoli, not wearing the helmet, rolling her eyes at your carefully chosen words of advice—and you become constantly worn down even as you pour your energies into loving her.

Only late, very late, does the intellect stop to think: and now the world of experience and the thing-in-itself seem so extraordinarily different and separate that it rejects any conclusion about the latter from the former, or else, in an awful, mysterious way, it demands the abandonment of our intellect, of our personal will in order to come to the essential by becoming essential. On the other hand, other people have gathered together all characteristic traits of our world of appearances (that is, our inherited idea of the world, spun out of intellectual errors) and, instead of accusing the intellect, have attacked the essence of things for causing this real, very uncanny character of the world, and have preached salvation from being.

Ideas about transmission of traits between the generations have shifted over the ages. Biological inheritance is a surprisingly recent concept. The word "gene" came into existence only in 1909. Until about two hundred years ago, Western thinking on the matter rested on ancient theories that are largely unknown to us. Those ideas are part of the bedrock of Western philosophy, intertwined with the development of science, inextricable from our history and in some ways from our thinking even now. Much of the source material has been lost. Authorship of what remains is frequently uncertain. Even contemporaneous secondhand accounts can be contradictory. And, of course, most of what humans have thought about reproduction in their time on the planet was never recorded.

Terrorism has no face, but the general mind instinctively attempts to put a face on it based on internally as well as externally predominant biases and knowledge. And the mind does so in the pursuit of self-preservation, because putting a face on an act of terrorism, increases the chances of survival. Once the mind has successfully put a face on terrorism, it tries to avoid intimacy with all the faces that come from similar cultural background. This entire mental process takes place driven by the biological drive for survival. Does this mean that we are biologically bound to act like phobics and racists! And the answer is - we have indeed inherited certain biopsychological drives from our primitive ancestors, but later in our evolutionary history, we also developed the mental capacity to override those primitive traits.

On the one hand, according to the theory of gene-environment interaction, people who inherit certain traits tend to seek out life experiences that reinforce those characteristics. The most low-reactive kids, for example, court danger from the time they’re toddlers, so that by the time they grow up they don’t bat an eye at grown-up-sized risks. They “climb a few fences, become desensitized, and climb up on the roof,” the late psychologist David Lykken once explained in an Atlantic article. “They’ll have all sorts of experiences that other kids won’t. Chuck Yeager (the first pilot to break the sound barrier) could step down from the belly of the bomber into the rocketship and push the button not because he was born with that difference between him and me, but because for the previous thirty years his temperament impelled him to work his way up from climbing trees through increasing degrees of danger and excitement.

You and I are learning to see our trait as a neutral thing—useful in some situations, not in others—but our culture definitely does not see it, or any trait as neutral. The anthropologist Margaret Mead explained it well. Although a culture’s newborns will show a broad range of inherited temperaments, only a narrow band of these, a certain type, will be the ideal. The ideal personality is embodied, in Mead's words, in 'every thread of the social fabric—in the care of the young child, the games the children play, the songs the people sing, the political organization, the religious observance, the art and the philosophy.' Other traits are ignored, discouraged, or if all else fails, ridiculed. What is the ideal in our culture? Movies, advertisements, the design of public spaces, all tell us we should be as tough as the Terminator, as stoic as Clint Eastwood, as outgoing as Goldie Hawn. We should be pleasantly stimulated by bright lights, noise, a gang of cheerful fellows hanging out in a bar. If we are feeling overwhelmed and sensitive, we can always take a painkiller.

Lamarck’s Impact So, how could these "favorable variations" occur? Darwin tried to answer this question from the standpoint of the primitive understanding of science at that time. According to the French biologist Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829), who lived before Darwin, living creatures passed on the traits they acquired during their lifetime to the next generation. He asserted that these traits, which accumulated from one generation to another, caused new species to be formed. For instance, he claimed that giraffes evolved from antelopes; as they struggled to eat the leaves of high trees, their necks were extended from generation to generation. Darwin also gave similar examples. In his book The Origin of Species, for instance, he said that some bears going into water to find food transformed themselves into whales over time. However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel (1822-84) and verified by the science of genetics, which flourished in the twentieth century, utterly demolished the legend that acquired traits were passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection fell out of favor as an evolutionary mechanism.

His message delivered, Gabriel departed, leaving the chosen Virgin of Nazareth to ponder over her wondrous experience. Mary's promised Son was to be "The Only Begotten" of the Father in the flesh; so it had been both positively and abundantly predicted. True, the event was unprecedented; true also it has never been paralleled; but that the virgin birth would be unique was as truly essential to the fulfilment of prophecy as that it should occur at all. That Child to be born of Mary was begotten of Elohim, the Eternal Father, not in violation of natural law but in accordance with a higher manifestation thereof; and, the offspring from that association of supreme sanctity, celestial Sireship, and pure though mortal maternity, was of right to be called the "Son of the Highest." In His nature would be combined the powers of Godhood with the capacity and possibilities of mortality; and this through the ordinary operation of the fundamental law of heredity, declared of God, demonstrated by science, and admitted by philosophy, that living beings shall propagate—after their kind. The Child Jesus was to inherit the physical, mental, and spiritual traits, tendencies, and powers that characterized His parents—one immortal and glorified—God, the other human—woman.

The central premise of racism, which distinguishes it from ethnic prejudice, is the notion of an ordered hierarchy of races in which some are superior to others. The superior race is assumed to enjoy the right to rule others because of its inherent qualities. Besides superiority, racism also connotes the idea of immutability, thought once to reside in the blood and now in the genes. Racists are concerned about intermarriage (“the purity of the blood”) lest it erode the basis of their race’s superiority. Since quality is seen as biologically inherent, the racist’s higher status can never be challenged, and inferior races can never redeem themselves. The notion of inherent superiority, which is generally absent from mere ethnic prejudice, is held to justify unlimited abuse of races held to be inferior, from social discrimination to annihilation. “The essence of racism is that it regards individuals as superior or inferior because they are imagined to share physical, mental and moral attributes with the group to which they are deemed to belong, and it is assumed that they cannot change these traits individually,” writes the historian Benjamin Isaac.2 It’s not surprising that the notion of racial superiority emerged in the 19th century, after European nations had established colonies in much of the world and sought a theoretical justification of their dominion over others.

I have done it! exclaimed Saphira. She arched her neck and loosed a jet of blue and yellow flame into the upper reaches of the building. I know my true name! She spoke a single line in the ancient language, and the inside of Eragon’s mind seemed to ring with a sound like a bell, and for a moment, the tips of Saphira’s scales gleamed with an inner light, and she looked as if she were made of stars. The name was grand and majestic, but also tinged with sadness, for it named her as the last female of her kind. In the words, Eragon could hear the love and devotion she felt for him, as well as all the other traits that made up her personality. Most he recognized; a few he did not. Her flaws were as prominent as her virtues, but overall, the impression was one of fire and beauty and grandeur. Saphira shivered from the tip of her nose to the tip of her tail, and she shuffled her wings. I know who I am, she said. Well done, Bjartskular, said Glaedr, and Eragon could sense how impressed he was. You have a name to be proud of. I would not say it again, however, not even to yourself, until we are at the…at the spire we have come to see. You must take great care to keep your name hidden now that you know it. Saphira blinked and shuffled her wings again. Yes, Master. The excitement running through her was palpable. Eragon sheathed Brisingr and walked over to her. She lowered her head until it was at his level. He stroked the line of her jaw, and then pressed his forehead against her hard snout and held her as tightly as he could, her scales sharp against his fingers. Hot tears began to slide down his cheeks. Why do you cry? she asked. Because…I’m lucky enough to be bonded with you. Little one.

The tyranny of caste is that we are judged on the very things we cannot change: a chemical in the epidermis, the shape of one’s facial features, the signposts on our bodies of gender and ancestry—superficial differences that have nothing to do with who we are inside. The caste system in America is four hundred years old and will not be dismantled by a single law or any one person, no matter how powerful. We have seen in the years since the civil rights era that laws, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, can be weakened if there is not the collective will to maintain them. A caste system persists in part because we, each and every one of us, allow it to exist—in large and small ways, in our everyday actions, in how we elevate or demean, embrace or exclude, on the basis of the meaning attached to people’s physical traits. If enough people buy into the lie of natural hierarchy, then it becomes the truth or is assumed to be. Once awakened, we then have a choice. We can be born to the dominant caste but choose not to dominate. We can be born to a subordinated caste but resist the box others force upon us. And all of us can sharpen our powers of discernment to see past the external and to value the character of a person rather than demean those who are already marginalized or worship those born to false pedestals. We need not bristle when those deemed subordinate break free, but rejoice that here may be one more human being who can add their true strengths to humanity. The goal of this work has not been to resolve all of the problems of a millennia-old phenomenon, but to cast a light onto its history, its consequences, and its presence in our everyday lives and to express hopes for its resolution. A housing inspector does not make the repairs on the building he has examined. It is for the owners, meaning each of us, to correct the ruptures we have inherited. The fact is that the bottom caste, though it bears much of the burden of the hierarchy, did not create the caste system, and the bottom caste alone cannot fix it. The challenge has long been that many in the dominant caste, who are in a better position to fix caste inequity, have often been least likely to want to. Caste is a disease, and none of us is immune. It is as if alcoholism is encoded into the country’s DNA, and can never be declared fully cured. It is like a cancer that goes into remission only to return when the immune system of the body politic is weakened.

Those afflicted with BPD suffer from emotional instability—in Katherine’s case, almost always caused by feelings of rejection or abandonment. They suffer from cognitive distortions, where they see the world in black and white, with anyone who isn’t actively ‘with them’ being considered an enemy. They are also prone to catastrophising, where they make logical leaps from minor impediments in their plans to assumptions of absolute ruin. BPD is often characterised by extremely intense but unstable relationships, as the sufferer gives everything that they can to a relationship in their attempts to ensure their partner never leaves but instead end up burning themselves out and blaming that same partner for the emotional toll that it takes on them. The final trait of BPD is impulsive behaviour, often characterised as self-destructive behaviour. In Katherine’s case, this almost always manifested itself in her hair-trigger temper. When she was enraged, it was like she lost all rational control over her actions, seeing everyone else as her enemies. This manifested itself in the ridiculous bullying she conducted at school, in her lashing out when she failed her test and in the vengeance that she took on her sexual abusers. It is likely that she inherited this disorder from her mother, who showed many of the same symptoms, and that they were exacerbated by her chaotic home life and the lack of healthy relationships in the adults around her that she might have modelled herself after. With Katherine, it was like a Jekyll and Hyde switch took place when her temper was raised. The charming, eager-to-please girl who usually occupied her body was replaced with a furious, foul-mouthed hellion bent on exacting her revenge no matter what the cost. In itself, this could have been an excellent excuse for almost everything that she did wrong in her life, up to and including the crimes that she would later be accused of. Unfortunately, this sort of ‘flipped switch’ argument doesn’t hold up when you consider that her choice to arm herself with a lethal weapon was premeditated. Part of this may certainly have been the cognitive distortion that Katherine experienced, telling her that everyone else was out to get her and that she had to defend herself, but ultimately, she was choosing to give a weapon to a person who would use it to end lives, if she had the opportunity. Assuming that this division of personalities actually existed, then ‘good’ Katherine was an accomplice to ‘bad’ Katherine, giving her the material support and planning that she needed to commit her vicious attacks.

Once a non-adaptive preference arises, it may turn into an adaptive preference through one of two processes: Fisher’s runaway process and conversion into a fitness indicator. Fisher (1930) realized that a genetic positive-feedback loop could develop between aesthetic preferences and sexual ornaments. Suppose that peahens vary in the strength of their preference for long peacock tails, and peacocks vary in the length of their tails, and both of these traits are genetically heritable. The peahens that are choosiest about tail length will tend to mate with the longest-tailed males. Their offspring will tend to inherit both the genes for longer-tail preferences and the genes for longer tails. These two traits will become genetically correlated—appearing together more often than expected by chance, if random mating were happening. Now, if most peahens favor longer over shorter tails, the longer-tailed male offspring will attract more mates and sire more peachicks. These peachicks in turn will inherit their grandmother’s tail-length obsession. Thus, the genes for longer-tail preferences and the genes for longer tails will both spread through the population as consequence of their genetic correlation. (The reasoning here looks a bit circular, but then all positive-feedback processes look a bit circular). Population genetics models show that Fisher’s runaway process can drive aesthetic preferences and sexual ornaments to extreme forms (Pomiankowski, Iwasa, & Nee, 1991). Fisher’s runaway process resembles the spread of fads and fashions: advertising creates demand (like a sexual preference), manufacturing fulfills the demand (like a sexual ornament), and a frenzy of consumption ensues (like runaway evolution) until next season’s fashion tastes switch to a new preference.

As the Irish immigrant population swelled in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, for example, there was a strong, negative reaction among many nativists to the mostly low-skilled Catholic immigrants, and this was often cast in both religious and racial terms. Jacobson continues, “Negative assessments of Irishism or Celtism as a fixed set of inherited traits thus became linked at mid-century to a fixed set of observable physical characteristics, such as skin and hair color, facial type, and physique. The Irishman was ‘low-browed,’ ‘brutish,’ and even ‘simian’ in popular discourse.”13

With a limited number of genes, humans enjoy a stable human genome. We inherit it from our parents, and it can give us a genetic predisposition for a variety of biological and pathological traits. Conversely, the human microbiota expresses one hundred times more genes than humans, is extremely plastic, and can change from individual to individual and within the same individual over time, all as the consequence of a variety of environmental factors that can shape its composition and function. Our human genome has coevolved with the trillions of constantly changing microorganisms found in and on the human body.

Watson’s dictum that there are no inherited human traits remains a pervasive dogma that separates the social sciences from genetics.

Not only do we inherit traits from our own parents but also from their parents—also in varying degrees from other relatives.

He knows about you, your father. He’s waiting for you.” “My sire, not my father,” I corrected between clenched teeth. “And he’s dead.” “Should be. But he’s a survivor.” She chuckled. “Another trait you inherited, I’m guessing.

What is in your blood matters, You cannot change your inherited traits . Many People who receive new privileges tend to forget their true origins. We cannot teach someone to respect others because it is ingrained in their blood.

Blind trust in tradition is an inherited trait in human beings.

His father, Jose Ramirez, was an extremely serious man who rarely smiled. He had a perpetually stern Mexican face with dark, piercing eyes and tight, firm lips—traits he had inherited from his father, Inacia, a large, brutal man with a bad temper who often beat his kids whether they misbehaved or not. Like the land around Camargo, he was mean and unforgiving. Jose Ramirez also believed in corporal punishment. If any of his four boys and four girls didn’t do what was expected of them, he was quick to beat them. Like his father, he had a bad temper, and often his beatings went on longer than they should have. However, in Mexico, it was a normal thing for a father to beat his children. It was the way things were done. It was commonly felt it taught the child respect and discipline and to accept the consequences of their actions. Often, though, the line separating punishment and correction was crossed, and Julian Tapia was beaten too hard, too long, too often—by both his father and his grandfather. It was his grandfather, Inacia, who beat Julian the most. If Julian did a particularly bad thing—like sleep late when there was work—his grandfather would tie him to a tree and lay into him with rope. The beatings made Julian quiet and withdrawn, and his face often seemed to be in an unhappy shadow. Because he was the oldest son, Julian received the most beatings. He took them stoically, not crying or begging for them to stop. He would just wait until his father’s and grandfather’s irrational rages were spent. It was not an easy life for Jose Ramirez. He had lost his wife at an early age. He felt cheated; it angered him deep inside, and he often vented his anger on his eight children.

Genes are the units of inheritance, the things that are selected by nature to be carried into the future. Nature sees the physical manifestation of a gene – the phenotype – and as a result of that trait enhancing survival, the DNA underwriting it succeeds, and is passed on down the generations. Genes are the templates on which our lives are built.

Kids are resilient. None more than that one. When she sets her mind to something, she will stop at nothing to get her way.” Leaning into his hold, I mused, “Hmm. Wonder if that’s an inherited trait—Slate stubbornness.” “Try tenacity, sweetheart.

The use of inherited physical characteristics to differentiate inner abilities and group value may be the cleverest way that a culture has ever devised to manage and maintain a caste system. “As a social and human division,” wrote the political scientist Andrew Hacker of the use of physical traits to form human categories, “it surpasses all others—even gender—in intensity and subordination.

Taken together, the artifacts comprised a giant sculpture, spanning more than a quadrillion dimensions. The Transmuters had built a structure that dwarfed universes, but touched each one only lightly. They hadn’t turned whole worlds to rubble, they hadn’t reshaped galaxies in their image. Having evolved on some distant, finite world, they’d inherited the most valuable survival trait of all. Restraint.

He never abandoned his family or started over with someone else. Even your mother appreciated that he didn’t ‘drink, whore, or gamble’ like his father. Your story, though, ends with you, Elsa. No one will suppress or reject the traits they inherit from you.

Maybe,” Jason said. “I just wish I understood what happened when I was two, why my mom got rid of me. Thalia ran away because of me.” “Hey, whatever’s happened, it wasn’t your fault. And your sister is pretty cool. She’s a lot like you.” Jason took that in silence. Leo wondered if he’d said the right things. He wanted to make Jason feel better, but this was way outside his comfort zone. Leo wished he could reach inside his tool belt and pick just the right wrench to fix Jason’s memory—maybe a little hammer—bonk the sticking spot and make everything run right. That would be a lot easier than trying to talk it through. Not good with organic life forms. Thanks for those inherited traits, Dad. He was so lost in thought, he didn’t realize the Hunters had stopped. He slammed into Thalia and nearly sent them both down

... anticipatory grief is among the top five worst traits she's inherited from me.

Brendan is, simply put, a wonderful individual. Nine years old and he’s thoughtful, empathetic, profoundly curious, funny as fuck, and warm. It’s as if he somehow inherited the best traits of his blood relatives but none of their damage.

and skin—surprisingly makes up less than 2 percent of our total DNA.14 The other 98 percent consists of what is called noncoding DNA (ncDNA), and is responsible for many of the emotional, behavioral, and personality traits we inherit.15 Scientists used to call it “junk DNA,” thinking it was mostly useless, but they’ve recently begun to recognize its significance. Interestingly, the percentage of noncoding DNA increases with the complexity of the organism, with humans having the highest percentage.16

Take your question about fear, for example. Strictly speaking, when you ask if we inherit a sense of fear, you’re asking if this trait is encoded in our genetics and passed to us from our parents, and the answer to that is a bit fuzzy. But if we ask a slightly different question—Is fear transmissible from generation to generation? Can the fearfulness of a parent be transmitted to the child?—the answer is an emphatic yes.

And I would say that if we better understand how this pain—this trauma—is passed from generation to generation, we have a better chance of intentionally and effectively stopping it. This comes back to transmissibility—emotional contagion. The word transmissible is used to describe the ability of a trait (or skill, belief, etc.) to be passed on from one person to another. When children raised in a household that speaks only Spanish grow up and speak Spanish, they didn’t “inherit” Spanish. The capacity to make associations between sound and image is primarily genetic, but the specific ways we turn that genetic capacity into a language are not. There are no genes for Chinese or English or Spanish. But language is transmissible. Early in life, the language-related systems in our brain’s cortex are so spongelike that they change when we interact with people in ways that involve speech. By speaking with the baby, we change her brain. This allows her to learn her family’s language.

We trust people to be good and decent. We trust our food, our drinks, to be safe. We trust our friends, our family, our partners, to have our backs and do the right thing. Honor their word. And we should not. People are selfish. They will lie and cheat if they think they can get away with it, if they think it will gain them fortune and fame. These traits are inherited and taught, passed down from generation to generation, a family tree of deceit and lies.

He's dead Duncan, killed himself when I was 13. In all those years he forgot something vital. He taught me when he was learning for himself. I know how to inflict pain; the scary thing is it doesn't bother me, a trait I'm sure I inherited from him." Lorelei Preston-The Wild Hunt

Our basic understanding of evolutionary theory (how evolution works) in the early twenty-first century may be summed up as follows:   1. Mutation introduces genetic variation, which may introduce phenotypic variation. 2. Developmental processes can introduce broader phenotypic variation, which may be heritable. 3. Gene flow and genetic drift mix genetic variation (and potentially its phenotypic correlates) without regard to the function of those genes or traits. 4. Natural selection shapes genotypic and phenotypic variation in response to specific constraints and pressures in the environment. 5. At any given time one or more of the processes above can be affecting a population. 6. Dynamic organism-environment interaction can result in niche construction, changing pressures of natural selection and resulting in ecological inheritance. 7. Cultural patterns and contexts can impact gene flow and the pressures of natural selection, which in turn can affect genetic evolution (gene-culture coevolution). 8. Multiple inheritance systems (genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic) can all provide information and contexts that enable populations to change over time or avoid certain changes.

It isn't what characteristics, what traits you've inherited from your parents that make you who you are. It's the choices you make, Henry, that decide what kind of person you become.

But I was blessed with another trait I inherited from my mother: her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma, but I don't hold on to the trauma. I never let the memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think too much about the ass-kicking your mother gave you, or the ass-kicking that life gave you, you'll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It's better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on. You'll have a few bruises and they'll remind you of what happened and that's okay. But after a while the bruises fade, and they fade for a reason- because now it's time to get up to some shit again.

Jeeh… It’s unbelievable.” Mom said. “It’s like listening to your father, except with a different face. You’ve inherited all of his traits… including the stubbornness.” -

In my opinion, the sexiest thing about a woman is her smile. If the woman doesn’t smile, or doesn’t smile well, men will not dig her. They will look for other women, who smile well. What’s involved in smiling? Good teeth, attentiveness, engaging eyes, and the ability to be happy. Each of these is an apparently inheritable trait.

All are shaped by things beyond their control, traits inherited, traits learned. For Linus, the piece of his leg bone that had refused to lengthen defined him. As he grew, lameness begot shyness, shyness begot stammer, and thus Linus grew into an unlikeable little boy who discovered that attention came his way only when he behaved badly.

He saw that there is a spectrum of variation between species that comes into being slowly, tiny change by tiny change. He realized that variations happen naturally when an organism reproduces. He realized that populations of species compete for resources. And he realized that the traits that are inherited, which benefit the organism, have a greater chance of showing up in that organism’s offspring, providing the engine that drives evolutionary change. Although

discrimination had to be justified by “scientific” evidence showing that human nature differs according to age, gender, and “race.” Until the 1700s, the word race was widely used to refer to a people, a tribe, or a nation. By the end of the century, however, it described a distinct group of human beings with inherited physical traits and moral qualities that set them apart from other “races.” The beginnings of that notion can also be detected in Mendelssohn’s story. MENDELSSOHN AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

He cocked an eyebrow. “Can I help you with something?” Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. “Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you.” Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. “Of course they are,” he said. “I am stunningly attractive.” “Haven’t you ever heard that modesty is an attractive trait?” “Only from ugly people,” Jace confided. “The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me.

None of this means of course that Robert E. Lee wasn't influenced by his father, or didn't inherit some of his better characteristics. Like Henry Lee, Robert was tall, physically strong, a born horseman and soldier, and so courageous that even his own soldiers often begged him to get back out of range, in vain of course. He had his father's gift for the sudden flank attack that would throw the enemy off balance, and also his father's ability to inspire loyalty--and in Robert's case, virtual worship--in his men. On the other hand, perhaps because of Henry Lee's quarrels with Jefferson and Madison, Robert had an ingrained distrust of politics and politicians, including those of the Confederacy. But the most important trait that influenced Robert was a negative one: his father had been voluble, imprudent, fond of gossip, hot-tempered, and quick to attack anybody who offended or disagreed with him. With Henry Lee, even minor differences of opinions escalated quickly into public feuds. Robert was, or forced himself to be, exactly the opposite. He kept the firmest possible rein on his temper, he avoided personal confrontations of every kind, and he disliked arguments. These characteristics, normally thought of as virtues, became in fact Robert E. Lee's Achilles' heel, the one weak point in his otherwise admirable personality, and a dangerous flaw for a commander, perhaps even a flaw that would, in the end, prove fatal for the Confederacy. Some of the most mistaken military decisions in the short history of the Confederacy can be attributed to Lee's reluctance to confront a subordinate and have it out with him on the spot, face to face.

I need not point out that being redheaded is not a maladaptive condition. It’s a very lovely condition. It is an absurdity, offensive to both redheads and geneticists—a group that contains both family and friends—to suggest that red hair might be subject to a force of natural selection so powerful that oblivion awaits. Even actually maladaptive genetic traits, actual diseases with well-understood modes of inheritance, such as cystic fibrosis or Duchenne muscular dystrophy are not likely to go extinct, because carriers of a single copy live healthily and pass the faulty gene on to their children.

My mom loves to laugh, especially when nothing is funny. It's an important trait to have around here, but I'm afraid I didn't inherit it.

What’s bred in the bone, Admits no hope of cure.

As humans, the development of our personality and success in life is not influenced only by our innate inherited traits