C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Pedigree
But even though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a low-born meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident.
Boileau.