Aristocratic Quotes - Page 3

• There is something to be said about laying bare the vocabulary of the aristocratic measure, right? There's something to be said about allowing the powerless to tell their own story.

  Kehinde Wiley

  Vocabulary, Stories, Said

  Source: www.artpractical.com

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• Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one.

  George Santayana

  Art, Republican, Conversation

  George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.5, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• I mean, in the history of poetry there have been a lot poetries where you have to inherit the position of poet from your ancestors and I think that if you just leave anyone to become a poet based on an aristocratic society, then a lot of people are left out who might have something to offer.

  Edward Hirsch

  Mean, Thinking, People

  "Do MFA Programs Hurt Poetry?". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

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• [ Massachusetts constitution] was [John Adams] attempt to justify that structure by the traditional notion of social estates - that the executive represented the monarchical estate, the senate the aristocratic estate, and the house of representatives the estate of the people.

  Gordon S. Wood

  People, House, Massachusetts

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

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• The parliamentary principle of vesting legislative power in the decision of the majority rejects the authority of the individual and puts a numerical quota of anonymous heads in its place. In doing so it contradicts the aristocratic principle, which is a fundamental law of nature.

  Adolf Hitler

  Law, Decision, Majority

  Adolf Hitler (2016). “Mein Kampf”, p.161, Adolf Hitler

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• In virtually every Continental state at this time, aristocracies had to live with the risk that their property might be pillaged or confiscated. Only in Great Britain did it prove possible to float the idea that aristocratic property was in some magical and strictly intangible way the people's property also. The fact that hundreds of thousands of men and women today are willing to accept that privately owned country houses and their contents are part of Britain's national heritage is one more proof of how successfully the British elite reconstructed its cultural image in an age of revolution.

  Linda Colley

  Country, Men, Ideas

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.177, Yale University Press

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• In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as "Barias" [Amharic for slave]... let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!

  Mengistu Haile Mariam

  Country, Dark, Hair

  "Mengistu Haile Mariam: The Profile of a Dictator". Ethiopian Review, February 1994.

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• America's egalitarian mandate reflects the liberality of the creator, and thus countermands, by divine witness, all feudal and aristocratic structures. It also parallels the Jewish concept of repair the world, or Tikkun ha'olam, which holds that the human spirit is in partnership with God to help finish the work of creation.

  Forrest Church

  America, World, Spirit

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• The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Laughter, Humor, Ideas

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• It will be said that the joy of mental adventure must be rare, that there are few who can appreciate it, and that ordinary education can take no account of so aristocratic a good. I do not believe this. The joy of mental adventure is far commoner in the young than in grown men and women. ...It is rare in later life because everything is done to kill it during education.

  Bertrand Russell

  Education, Believe, Adventure

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.95, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Intelligent, Doe

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• There is no doubt that sorrow brings one down in the world. The aristocratic privilege of silence belongs, you soon find out, to only the happy state- or, at least, to the state when pain keeps within bounds.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Pain, Silence, Doubt

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

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• Sharpe is my favorite role of all that I've played. He's a very complex character. He knows that he's a good soldier, but he will always have to fight the prejudice of aristocratic officers because of his rough working-class upbringing. On the battlefield, he's full of confidence - but off it, he is unsure, a bit shy and ill at ease.

  Sean Bean

  Character, Fighting, Class

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• The gitano is the most distinguished, profound and aristocratic element in my country, the one that most represents its Way of being and best preserves the fire, the blood and the alphabet of Andalusian and universal truth.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Country, Fire, Blood

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• The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Thinking, People, Mind

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1840). “Democracy in America”, p.10

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• In the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare ... I am not concerned with who wrote the works of Shakespeare ... but I can hardly think it was the Stratford boy. Whoever wrote them had an aristocratic attitude.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Attitude, Humble, Boys

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• It is the clash of two different worlds that makes British-ness unique - we have an aristocratic, noble history, but it is always contrasted with something rebellious.

  Christopher Bailey

  Unique, Two, Different

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• When we consider the close connection between science and industrial development on the one hand, and between literary and aesthetic cultivation and an aristocratic social organization on the other, we get light on the opposition between technical scientific studies and refining literary studies. We have before us the need of overcoming this separation in education if society is to be truly democratic.

  John Dewey

  Light, Hands, Organization

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education”, p.292, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Believe, Essence, Conviction

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• Where there is no danger of overt action there is rarely any interference with freedom. That is why there has so often been amazing freedom of opinion within an aristocratic class which at the same time sanctioned the ruthless suppression of heterodox opinion among the common people. When the Inquisition was operating most effectively against the bourgeois who had lapsed into heresy, the princes of the Church and the nobles enjoyed the freedom of the Renaissance.

  Walter Lippmann

  Class, People, Church

  Walter Lippmann (2003). “Men of Destiny (Ppr)”, p.99, Transaction Publishers

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• In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Odds, Play

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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• The decay of old aristocratic prejudices against greedy speculation, the undermining of orthodox Christian faith (which forbids avarice)... the debauching of agriculture to a gross money-getting concern: these particular aspects of a vast and voracious concentration upon profits are so many illustrations of our sinning confusion of values.

  Russell Kirk

  Christian, Illustration, Agriculture

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.140, Regnery Publishing

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• We modern egalitarians are tempted to the primal sin of pride in the opposite way from the ancients. The old, aristocratic form of pride was the desire to be better than others. The new, democratic form is the desire not to have anyone better than yourself. It is just as spiritually deadly and does not even carry with it the false pleasure of gloating superiority.

  Peter Kreeft

  Pride, Opposites, Desire

  Peter Kreeft (1990). “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven-- But Never Dreamed of Asking”, p.29, Ignatius Press

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• I liked being Doc Holliday. It's fun to be insightful and aristocratic, to stand up for your friend and make sacrifices for him. It was fun to be arrogant like he was and have the goods to back it up. He was a very noble character. Although, let's not forget, he did kill a lot of people.

  Val Kilmer

  Fun, Character, Sacrifice

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.

  Lincoln Kirstein

  Independent, Expression, Order

  Lincoln Kirstein (1952). “The Classic Ballet, Basic Technique and Terminology”

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