Family Tree Quotes

“I was thinking how complicated life is and how there are no simple roads or paths. We are a fabric of mistakes and hurts; a family tree of fumbled attempts, successes and failures.”
― Belinda Jeffrey, One Long Thread

“Tell me about your family," I said. And so she did. I listened intently as my mother went through each branch of the tree. Years later, after the funeral, Maria had asked me questions about the family - who was related to whom - and I struggled. I couldn't remember. A big chunk of our history had been buried with my mother. You should never let your past disappear that way.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

“كل شجرة عائلة تحتاج إلى تهذيب”
― أنيس منصور, قالوا

“Jesus can always reject his father,
But he cannot escape his mother's blood.
He'll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers,
But he'll never escape what he's made up of.”
― Ethel Cain

“In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Some of us can live without a society but not without a family.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“My family tree has many branches, both living and dead... but all equally important. I cherish the memories that make its roots run deep.”
― Lynda I Fisher

“During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

“O Heavenly Children, God's messengers are as limitless as the fish in the sea. They come in all colors, regions, languages and creeds. But their message is one and the same, don't you see? He only wishes to unite all His children under one family tree.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“In united families, they might sleep with half filled stomach but no one sleeps with empty stomach.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Miarr is descended from the Guardians of the Light, who in turn were descended from the mysterious Guardians of the Seas. It is not known where the cats came into the family tree.”
― Angie Sage, Syren

“Through the various branches of your tree, you are connected to the entirety of human history. When we talk about the ancient Egyptians building the pyramids, we're not talking about a bunch of exotic strangers, we're talking about our great-great-many-times-great grandparents!”
― Laurence Overmire, Digging for Ancestral Gold: The Fun and Easy Way to Get Started on Your Genealogy Quest

“She went around reading everything- the directions on the grits bag, Tate's notes, and the stories from her fairy-tale books she had pretended to read for years. Then one night she made a little oh sound, and took the old Bible from the shelf. Sitting at the table, she turned the thin pages carefully to the one with the family names. She found her own at the very bottom: There it was, her birthday: Miss Catherine Danielle Clark, October 10, 1945. Then, going back up the list, she read the real names of her brothers and sisters:
Master Jeremy Andrew Clark, January 2, 1939. "Jeremy," she said out loud. "Jodie, I sure never thought a' you as Master Jeremy."
Miss Amanda Margaret Clark, May 17, 1937. Kya touched the name with her fingers. Repeated it several times.
She read on. Master Napier Murphy Clark, April 14, 1936. Kya spoke softly, "Murph, ya name was Napier."
At the top, the oldest, Miss Mary Helen Clark, September 19, 1934. She rubbed her fingers over the names again, which brought faces before her eyes. They blurred, but she could see them all squeezed around the table eating stew, passing cornbread, even laughing some. She was ashamed that she had forgotten their names, but now that she'd found them, she would never let them go again.
Above the list of children she read: Mister Jackson Henry Clark married Miss Julienne Maria Jacques, June 12, 1933. Not until that moment had she known her parents' proper names.
She sat there for a few minutes with the Bible open on the table. Her family before her.
Time ensures children never know their parents young. Kya would never see the handsome Jake swagger into an Asheville soda fountain in early 1930, where he spotted Maria Jacques, a beauty with black curls and red lips, visiting from New Orleans.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“We never fully move on,
We leave a piece of ourselves behind
Like leaves and trunks molded into the earth
And forest floor, we give what we know
And others take it up and use it to grow.

I stand under the shade of giants.”
― Eric Overby, Legacy

“Oh, is that right? You know, a lioness will protect her cub by baring her teeth, by roaring, using her claws to defend her cub if she feels she has to - this mother, has other means. You are standing in the way of my daughter's best interests. If you try to pick our peach from our family tree, you will be picking a fight. Do you understand me?”
― Steven L. Sheppard, The Untold Story Of Pyramus And Thisbe

“You can take the Indian out of the family, but you cannot take the family out of the Indian.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“One can never be 100% certain when it comes to family lineage. One must always keep an open mind, willing to go wherever the facts may lead.”
― Laurence Overmire, One Immigrant's Legacy: The Overmyer Family in America, 1751-2009: A Biographical Record of Revolutionary War Veteran Capt. John George Overmire and His Descendants

“Grief does not exist within a vacuum, but it also does not exist within just one life. It spreads out and affects the people “above you” in your family tree and the people who will come after you or “below you.” Grief also impacts entire races, genders, generations, and communities, and those beliefs about grief and the stories we tell ourselves about whether or not grief is acceptable, what’s at the root cause of grief, and whether or not we can recover from that grief have an enormous impact on how we give ourselves permission to grieve, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“He had not colored the leaves in yet, and the trunk and its branches looked for the moment less like a tree and more like a great brown river, the Nile, the Amazon, the Benedetto and Flynn river of blood, and there at its isthmus was this one child, so that it seemed that all of these people, from Poland, from Italy, from Ireland and the Bronx and Brooklyn, had come together for no other reason than to someday produce Robert Benedetto, in an event as meant, as important as that one in Bethlehem that he had learned about in catechism class at St. Stannie's.”
― Anna Quindlen, Black and Blue

“No normal sheet of paper could possibly trace their family tree, which in any case was more like a mangrove thicket.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“That knave would happily use a sextant to investigate his lineage and only tell the true Sun from a bastard.”
― Stewart Stafford

“You can even tell where a person's family came from by looking at the type of bacterium he or she carries!”
― Jennifer Gardy

“Dynasty politics = Family tree with too many branches!”
― Dipti Dhakul

“Miriam Farid is the daughter of Mohammed Farid and Patricia Florence Suthers.”
― Miriam Farid, Thorny Rose