Agnes de Mille Quotes

My wife thinks I have an obsession with social class. So I guess I have an obsession with social class. It probably stems from feeling like an outcast.

Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging.

She was trusted and valued by her father, loved and courted by all dogs, cats, children, and poor people, and slighted and neglected by everybody else.

By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else.

I hate when people call me a socialite because you have to have money to be a socialite, which I don't have.

Nowadays nothing but money counts: a fortune brings honors, friendships; the poor man everywhere lies low.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

The Porsche was just a vehicle to get to another place. I used it to change people's perceptions of me. I had grown up really middle class. USC was filled with elitists, richies who would go skiing every weekend. So I pretended like I was part of that world - to be accepted.

[A pariah is] something like a martyr with more suffering and less class.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken

Socially, I never belonged to any class, rich or poor. To the rich I was poor, and to the poor I was poor pretending to be like the rich.

Old maids like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and the rich.

There is this to be said about having money. You get rejected by a higher class of people.

Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.

Rogues in rags are kept in countenance by rogues in ruffles.

Aristocrats have heirs; the poor have children; the rest keep dogs.

If you would marry suitably, marry your equal.

People will think you're courting me.' 'Nonsense, everyone knows I don't court respectable women.

About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman's education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.

In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you.

Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by lifting his head high, can pretend that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down on him from above.

Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe, to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals.

The same amount of pride which makes a man treat haughtily his inferiors, makes him cringe servilely; to those above him.

Do not choose for your friends and familiar acquaintance those that are of an estate or quality too much above yours...You will hereby accustom yourselves to live after their rate in clothes, in habit, and in expenses, whereby you will learn a fashion and rank of life above your degree and estate, which will in the end be your undoing.