The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

We are so far identical with our ancestors and our contemporaries that it is very rarely we can see anything that they do not see.  It is not unjust that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children, for the children committed the sins when in the persons of their fathers; they ate the sour grapes before they were born:  true, they have forgotten the pleasure now, but so has a man with a sick headache forgotten the pleasure of getting drunk the night before.