Aristocratic Quotes

• These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Believe, Passion, Thinking

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• There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Short Life, Men, Hair

  Letter to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813

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• Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

  Frank Herbert

  Government, Class, Aristocracy

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Children of Dune”, p.198, Penguin

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• Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

  Samuel Butler

  People, Common Sense, Atmosphere

  Samuel Butler (1951). “Samuel Butler's notebooks”

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• Though, with the ascendancy of Louis, the political power of the nobles finally came to an end, France remained, in the whole complexion of her social life, completely aristocratic.

  Lytton Strachey

  Political, France, Advertising

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.46, Delphi Classics

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• What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Giving, Literature, Taste

  Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.49, Courier Corporation

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• It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Doe, Modern

  Herbert Read (1971). “The Philosophy of Modern Art: Collected Essays”, Books for Libraries

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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, Aristocracy

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

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• Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular.

  Maximilien Robespierre

  Ideas, Atheism, Watches

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• An aristocratic culture does not advertise its emotions. In its forms of expression it is sober and reserved. Its general attitude is stoic.

  Johan Huizinga

  Attitude, Sober Up, Expression

  Johan Huizinga (2014). “Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance”, p.47, Princeton University Press

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• Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.

  Damien Hirst

  Country, Weekend, Cities

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• We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Tired, Harvard, Explanation

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• I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Crush, Political, Aristocracy

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826”, p.44, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I'm actually as common as mud. I'm not particularly well read, or bred. But the way I look... I seem to have this sort of 'aristocratic' demeanor.

  Charles Dance

  Looks, Way, Mud

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• We stand a better chance with aristocracy, whether hereditary or elective, than with monarchy.

  Ezra Stiles

  Aristocracy, Chance, Monarchy

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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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• By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature.

  Adolf Hitler

  Majority Rule, Numbers, Democracy

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I really don’t feel exclusiveMy ambition instead, perhaps because of my peasant-worker background, is to look at the world with others, not as an aristocratic intellectual.

  Ermanno Olmi

  Ambition, Intellectual, Looks

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• Five or six hundred [aristocratic] heads lopped off would have assured you repose and happiness; a false humanity has restrained your arm and suspended your blows; it will cost the lives of millions of your brothers.

  Jean-Paul Marat

  Brother, Blow, Humanity

  L'Ami du peuple newspaper, Volume 2, p. 1121,

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• If you're smart enough you realise that your possessions possess you in their turn. Collecting has a neurotic aspect. I find it boring when collectors found their own private museums or try to establish a memorial to themselves in the form of their collections, it's part of the old aristocratic mentality. I think a collection ought to be dismantled after the collector's death.

  Thomas Koerfer

  Smart, Thinking, Museums

  Source: www.koerferfilm.com

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• Our traditional stories are based on an aristocratic model without a middle class, whereas The Arabian Nights reflect people living in cities, traders, merchants, travelers, with a wide range of personalities.

  Marina Warner

  Night, Class, Cities

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Occasionally, when I lived in London, I would have sex with a girl from an aristocratic family. I always enjoyed doing to them what their ancestors did to my country.

  Craig Ferguson

  Girl, Country, Sex

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• Mystical identification transcends the aristocratic virtue of courageous self-sacrifice. It is self- surrender in a higher, more complete, and more complete and more radical form. It is the perfect form of self-affirmation.

  Paul Tillich

  Sacrifice, Self, Perfect

  Paul Tillich (1968). “The Courage To Be”

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• Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Democracy, Aristocracy, Periods

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• The Aristocratic Institutions of England [had] acted much like the Slavery Institutions of America... [in] demoralis[ing] large classes outside their own special boundaries... [in producing] a long habit of submission... [and in] enfeebl[ing] by corrupting those who should assail them.

  John Bright

  Class, America, Long

  Letter to Richard Congrieve on November 24, 1866. "1867 Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution". Book by Maurice Cowling, p. 25, 1967.

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