Aristocracy Quotes

• There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

  Josh Billings

  Intelligence, Comedy, Surprise

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• There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!

  Tennessee Williams

  Soul, Passionate

  Tennessee Williams (1994). “Collected Stories”, p.83, New Directions Publishing

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• Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.

  George Jean Nathan

  People, Common Sense, Worry

  George Jean Nathan (1960). “The magic mirror: selected writings on the theatre”

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• The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him is aristocracy.

  Emily Dickinson

  Spring, Food, Animal

  "The pedigree of honey" l.1 (ca. 1884)

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• Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste; they may be looked upon as the connecting link of the two great classes of society.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Two, Class, People

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2001). “Democracy in America”, p.123, Penguin

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• Throughout my career, I was to be cast as a frontier girl, an aristocrat, an Arabian, a Eurasian, a Polynesian, and a Chinese.

  Gene Tierney

  Girl, Careers, Chinese

  Gene Tierney, Mickey Herskowitz (1979). “Self-portrait”, Peter Wyden

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• Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into savage violence and chaos.

  Polybius

  Historical, Democracy, Savages

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• Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence.

  James Bryant Conant

  Excellence, Calling, Honest

  James Bryant Conant (1942). “Our Fighting Faith: Five Addresses to College Students”, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press

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• It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.

  W. H. Auden

  Past, Cheerful, Majority

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• There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Peace, Powerful, War

  Theodore Roosevelt (1954). “The days of Armageddon, 1900-1914”

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• No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches no great Universities nor public schools -- no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class -- no Epsom nor Ascot Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life.

  Henry James

  Loyalty, Country, School

  'Hawthorne' (1879)

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• The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

  Mark Twain

  Class, Names, Perception

  Mark Twain, Bernard L. Stein (1983). “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, p.239, Univ of California Press

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• All that is noble is in itself of a quiet nature, and appears to sleep until it is aroused and summoned forth by contrast.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Sleep, Noble, Quiet

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.230, Ravenio Books

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• The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Political, Democracy, Politics

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

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• The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Freedom, Political, Greek

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (2012). “The Philosophy of History”, p.104, Courier Corporation

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• A fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and dukes are just as great a terror - and they last longer.

  David Lloyd George

  Two, Political, Cost

  Speech at Newcastle, 9 Oct. 1909, in The Times 11 Oct. 1909

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• The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarcely capable of cure.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Luxury, Ruins, Chivalry

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats (1831). “The poetical works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats”, p.387

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• I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for 'Tis only to them that they are blessings.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Hate, Blessing, Titles

  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie Wharncliffe (1837). “The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu”, p.164

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• Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.

  Edmund Burke

  Pride, Men, Order

  Edmund Burke (1852). “The works and correspondence of...Edmund Burke”, p.188

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• Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

  Edmund Burke

  Order, Society, Ornaments

  'Reflections on the Revolution in France' (1790) p. 205

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• Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity

  Thomas Jefferson

  Dream, School, Opportunity

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• I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Names, Society, Titles

  Oliver Goldsmith (1819). “Citizen of the World”, p.238

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• An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.

  Nancy Mitford

  Running, Cutting, Luck

  'Noblesse Oblige' (1956) 'The English Aristocracy'

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• Aristocracy is always cruel.

  Wendell Phillips

  Wendell Phillips, Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison, C C Burleigh (2007). “No Slave-Hunting in the Old Bay State: An Appeal to the People and Legislature of Massachusetts -- Including, Toussaint L'Ouverture”, p.37, Cosimo, Inc.

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• 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.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

  Law, Events, Movement

  Henry Sumner Maine, Sir, J. H. Morgan (2000). “Ancient Law”, p.9, Beard Books

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