Quotes About Aristocracy

known among the people as the White Queen.

I rather doubt that anyone tells Lord Hylton what to do," she said dryly.

To her, Vichy was nothing but a nest of gossip, infighting, and intrigue, filled, as she put it, with the "aristocracy of defeat"—politicians, businessmen, civil servants, military officers, and others—all seeking jobs or other personal or political gain from the new government.

The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization.

He came from the tiny group of very grand aristocratic families who, as one of Bertie's cleverer mistresses observed, "believed they26 had the prescriptive right to rule England in the same way as they ruled their estates.

The Commander of the British cruiser Cardiff , who happened to be an old friend, got wind of Olga's presence in town and invited her to his ship. After tea on board, the grand duchess was tactfully presented with a length of navy-blue cloth, enough to make clothing for the four members of her family, and she was relieved that they could be respectable again.

if Greece were a woman so sensually provocative that I must fall physically and desperately in love with her, and at the same time so calmly aristocratic that I should never be able to approach her.

the Duke of Guise usurped his seat at dinner.

The Guises were one of the most powerful noble families in France.

for the young Louis XV: Philippe II, Duc d'Orléans, was a man who combined a negligible intellect with deeply committed self-indulgence.

The faith in reason insists that the poverty of democracy offers a greater hope for mankind than the prosperity that attaches itself to aristocracy or despotism.

warfare was primarily an aristocratic pursuit.

There was a time when my ancestors were proud of the title of chamberlain or butler to the King," said the Baron. "There was also a time," replied Morel haughtily, "when my ancestors cut off your ancestors' heads.

Aristocracy is relative: there are all sorts of inexpensive little resorts where the son of a furniture salesman may be the arbiter of all things elegant, holding court like a young Prince of Wales.

the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle classes, that occurred in France during the Third Republic and the fin de siècle

As for all the little people who call themselves Marquis de Cambremerde or de Gotoblazes, there is no difference between them and the humblest rookie in your regiment. Whether you go and do wee-wee at the Countess Cack's or cack at the Baroness Wee-wee's, it's exactly the same, you will have compromised your reputation and have used a shitty rag instead of toilet paper. Which is unsavoury.

The hefty figure of M. de Guermantes was seated beside her, proud and Olympian. One got the impression that the notion of his vast riches was omnipresent in all his limbs, giving him an extraordinary density, as though they had been smelted in a crucible into a single human ingot to create this man who was worth so much.

Prince Charles is an absolute Mountbatten. The real intelligence in the royal family comes through my parents to Prince Philip and the children.

Aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.

That fellow Argencourt is well born but ill bred, a worse-than-second-rate diplomat, a loathsome husband and a womanizer, a double-faced stage character. He's one of those men who are incapable of understanding but perfectly capable of destroying the high things in life.

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it.

You know what the aristocracy is like. They turn their children over to the care of nurses and governesses from the day they are born and have little to do with them after that.

Eco-romantics may fantasise about the pre-fossil fuels economy of the past, but the reality of pre-industrial agrarian society really was slavery, war, famine, disease and a short average lifespan for everyone except a very privileged aristocratic few.