A man finds room in a few square inches of his face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start

All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

The greatest man in history was the poorest