aristocracy quotes

The order of nobility is of great use, too, not only in what it creates, but in what it prevents. It prevents the rule of wealththe religion of gold. This is the obvious and natural idol of the Anglo-Saxon† From this our aristocracy preserves us.

-Walter Bagehot
  The English Constitution, ch.4,'The House of Lords'.

Entre nosotros el dinero ha hecho desaparecer ma  s preocupaciones de familia que en las viejas sociedades europeas. En e  stas hay lo que llaman aristocracia de dinero, que jama  s alcanza con su poder†a hacer olvidar enteramente la oscuridad de la cuna, al paso que en Chile†todo va cediendo su puesto a la riqueza. Among us, money has dissolved more worries than among ancient European societies. The latter have what they call the moneyed aristocracy, which, despite all its power, never gets to forget its humble origins; on the other hand, in Chile everything yields to wealth.

- Alberto Blest Gana
  Mart|  n Rivas, ch.2 (translated1918).

   The true aristocracyand the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.

- Karen, Baroness pseudonym Isak Dinesen Blixen
  Out of  Africa, pt.5, ch.1.

This regard for the liberties of Europe, this care at one time for the protestant interest, this excessive love for the balance of power, is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain.

-John Bright
  Speech, Birmingham, 29 Oct.

Aristocracy of the Moneybag.

-Thomas Carlyle
  History of the French Revolution, vol.3, bk.7, ch.7.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

- G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
  In the NewYork Times,1 Feb.

A Bunyip Aristocracy.

- Daniel Henry Deniehy
  Quoted in The Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 4. The bunyip is a mythical, chimerical animal of  Australian folklore. French painter and art theorist, associatedwith the Nabis group ('prophets' influenced by Gauguin), and Symbolism.

The Pedigree of Honey Does not concern the Bee A Clover, any time, to him, Is Aristocracy

- Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
c.1884  Complete Poems, no.1627 (first published1890).

Consider Ireland. Thus you have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Churchand in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish Question.

- Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
  Speech, House of Commons,16 Feb.

[The] English proletariat is becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimatelyat the possession of a bourgeoisaristocracyand a bourgeoisproletariat as well as a bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.

- Friedrich Engels
  Letter to Karl Marx,7 Oct.

They that are discontented under monarchy call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy call it oligarchy; so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes that want of government is any new kind of government.

-Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan, pt.2, ch.19.

Thus ourdemocracy was, froman early period, themost aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic in the world.

-1st Baron
  History of England,  vol.1, ch.1.

The Chinese are the aristocracy of the East.

-W(illiam) Somerset Maugham
  The Gentleman in the Parlour.

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 Freeman Mitford
  Noblesse Oblige.