Quotes About Aristocracy

They were merchant families, mostly, descendants of Englishmen who'd gotten rich trading with the tsars and sultans and rajahs of long ago, then come over to America because all their money didn't stop the aristocrats from snubbing them. Now their great-grandchildren just made a few investments here and there and kept charitable institutions the way an average Joe keeps a pet.

It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world.

When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the Rostovs' box—her whole bosom completely exposed—beckoned the old count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had entered her box, began talking to him with an amiable smile.

Elena Pavlovna was for him [Tsar Nicholas I] the personification of those empty people who talked not only about science and poetry, but also about governing people, imagining that they could govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, governed them.

Todo se hacía con las manos limpias, con camisas planchadas, con palabras francesas y, sobre todo, en la más alta sociedad, es decir, con la aquiescencia de las personas más influyentes.

In the middle of the seventeenth century the bourgeois revolution in England developed under the guise of a religious reformation. A struggle for the right to pray according to one's own prayer book was identified with the struggle against the king, the aristocracy, the princes of the church, and Rome.

During her childhood, Jane had been "placed out," the term for children from middle-income families who were sent to live with members of the nobility, or the offspring of an aristocrat who were sent to the palace to learn the manners and customs of royalty, to better cement the family's social connections and pave the way for a spectacular marriage.

I grew up in a bit of a vacuum. And as a kid, you see 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' and you're like, 'Oh, it's a cartoon.' There's mixed media. It's funny, and there's stop-motion. But as an adult, you figure it out, how the entire underpinnings of their comedy was poking fun at the rank and file of the British aristocracy and the monarchy.

Humans will be like decayed gentry. We'll have the glorious mansion called the past that is falling into disrepair. We'll have a piece of land that we didn't look after very well called the planet. And we'll have some nice clothes and a lot of stories. We'll be fading aristocracy. We'll be Blanche Dubois in a moth-eaten silk dress. We'll be Marie Antionette with no cake.

Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to his work.

To make Democracy work, you need an aristocratic democracy. To make Aristocracy work, you need a democratic aristocracy.

The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work.

If you look at most of the Royal Houses in Europe, the inbreeding was pretty outstanding.

I'm proud of being British, but I think our aristocracy is overrated.

Of all Rome's seven hills, however, the Palatine was the most exclusive by far.

At a time when Maecenas, that celebrated arbiter of taste, was busy introducing the heated swimming pool to Rome, the Princeps's house struck those familiar with top-end properties as 'notable neither for scale nor style'.

There exists a false aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent and virtue.

The administration officials were supposed to be "English gentlemen"—demobilized officers or university graduates. If a man had gone to private school, was an active sportsman, and looked good, he could probably get a job in the colonial service.

Growing up in stable, happy, and secure households may end up killing ambition, which leads to downward social mobility. The most extreme examples of this are found in aristocratic families, in which the amount of inherited wealth tends to decline with every generation.

Este palacio estaba reservado a la más alta aristocracia de la locura, a la sangre azul de los perturbados, a los linajudos de las demencias.

Now we think of the middle class as people who are neither rich nor poor, but originally they were a distinct group. In a feudal society, there are just two classes: a warrior aristocracy, and the serfs who work their estates. The middle class were a new, third group who lived in towns and supported themselves by manufacturing and trade.

These people seemed so enwrapped in snobbishness and the glory of being rich that they had no art sense whatever.

The records of a relatively small bank, C. Hoare's & Co. in London, which have survived intact from the period 1702–1724, illustrate this point. Though the bank did lend money to aristocrats and lords, fully two-thirds of the biggest borrowers from Hoare's over this period were not from the privileged social classes.

No one seems to realise that the aristocracy is God's special gift to mankind. The burghers treat us no better than commoners. Considering our divine origins, such disrespect is the worst form of impiety. I'm sure your Grace agrees.