Yoko Ono Quotes

My mother Diana was a true-blue aristocrat, descended from William the Conqueror and listed in 'Burke's Peerage.' My father David, from a poor Scottish family, was a doctor.

A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a duke in a past life.

There is no stronger craving in the world than that of the rich for titles, except that of the titled for riches.

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.

Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth.

People tend to assume that I come from a long line of castle-dwelling gentry and am made of money.

The gentleman will please remember that when his half-civilized ancestors were hunting wild boar in Silesia, mine were princes of the earth.

Titles were symbols, just as impressive buildings were symbols, except that titles, unlike buildings, cost nothing.

I come from an old establishment family from Singapore.

Kate Middleton has no blue blood coursing through her veins. Her father, Michael, is self-made, and he and his wife have been very successful with their party business, but they are and always will be strictly middle class.

We certainly grew up and had opportunities. But it's not like our parents are aristocratic blue bloods.

Generosity is the accompaniment of high birth; pity and gratitude are its attendants.

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Barontage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; . . .

The nobly born must nobly meet his fate.

Today nobility is gone: there is only a peerage.

Of what avail are pedigrees?

Spurn not the nobly born with love affected; nor treat with virtuous scorn the well connected.

Those who have nothing else to recommend them to the respect of others but only their blood, cry it up at a great rate, and have their mouth perpetually full of it. They swell and vapor, and you are sure to hear of their families and relations every third word.

My stepfather is a baron. He has a castle in Belgium that's been in his family for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's not fancy; it's really sort of brimstone and dark. It's got a moat and a drawbridge.

Character and class are character and class. Either you have it or you don't.

Class does not mean huge possession of money. Mother Teresa was a classy woman. So is Manjula Bhargava, a great mathematician of Indian origin. The concept that you automatically gain class by acquiring money is an outdated thought process.

I came from an affluent family, am well-known and well-read.

I want to have a catalogue or a share in a company. I'm trying to take my family's name from lower-middle class to aristocracy. I have my sights set high.

My mum was born in the former Czechoslovakia, and even though my grandparents weren't wealthy, they were aristocrats in their time.