A. N. Wilson Quotes

I don't think I'd have done comedy if I was born eighty years ago I'd have been a lord. Shooting people that were on my land With a wig, yeah. And some crisps.

The great families have their privileges.

Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.

Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it.

Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to his work.

'Downton Abbey' about upper-class posh people: of course it is.

Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you're Royalty.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

No, I was not born with a monocle in my eye.

One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you're obliged to act like one.

The theory in great families was 'why work if you don't have to.' Being a public figure was reserved for movie stars.

I'm not from aristocracy, or anything like that.

A lot of people have it - that fantasy of being lord or lady of the manor, either in the present or at some time in history.

I was not to the manor born.

A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars.

Scratch a pessimist, and you often find a defender of privilege.

Somewhere among every man's ancestors is a prince or a lord, a priest or a saint, and don't forget it. Wake up! Inherit the wealth of your ancestors!.. Stop living like a mouse, live like the rich people do.

…those are called gentlemen who live idly in abundance from the returns of their possessions without having any care either for cultivation or for other necessary trouble in living. Such are pernicious in every republic and in every province, but more pernicious are those who, beyond the aforesaid fortunes, command from a castle and have subjects to obey them.

The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.

The threat to men of great dignity, privilege, and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth.

I'm not an aristocrat. I have no idea what that is.

I think a comedian has to be low status on some level; that gives you the right to do all sorts of jokes about all sorts of different kinds of people.

At the other end of the spectrum, George Gideon Oliver King Rameses Osborne, the fourteen-year-old novelty Chancellor and future baronet of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon - a man so posh he probably weeps champagne.

Gentility is nothing but Ancient Riches.

NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.