Sophie Swetchine Quotes

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order.

Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.

There's no snobbery in me.

in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege.

You know our nation. If a citizen officer of one town has just one more silver button on his epaulette than another, great hue and cry arises and the important cause goes by the board …

Golf has been the sport of the social elite, with lawyers and doctors. But I have never been embarrassed by the looks I've been given by others. I have sometimes been looked at with condescension and it still happens now, but I know how to deal with it - I know whose opinions count.

There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

Exclusiveness is a characteristic of recent riches, high society, and the skunk.

Aristocracy's only an admission that certain traits which we call fine - courage and honor and beauty and all that sort of thing - can best be developed in a favorable environment, where you don't have the warpings of ignorance and necessity.

Aristocrats might shrug, but commoners, dreading any collapse of the social order, wanted the rules of behavior to be observed.

The greater the privilege, the more hidden the arrogance. The Emperor of China need not exist.

Aristocracy is a relative thing. And there are plenty of out-of-the-way places where the son of an upholsterer is the arbiter of fashion and reigns over a court like any young Prince of Wales.

Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by thanking his rank for his talent.

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

I'm not a snob. Ask anybody-well, anybody who matters.

For any man to match above his rank is but to sell his liberty.

Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.

Freedom doth with degree dispense.

High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.

We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy,or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.

Power leads to more power, no matter what your racket, and not only were they rich and influential but they were smart as hell, too.

Kelsier smiled. 'It means that you, Vin, are a very special person. You have a power that most high noblemen envy. It is a power that, had you been born an aristocrat, would have made you one of the most deadly and influential people in all of the final empire.' Kelsier leaned forward again. 'But, you weren't born an aristocrat. You're not noble, Vin. You don't have to play by their rules--and that makes you even more powerful.

Money is a great dignifier.

[P]ride is something only folk with money can afford.

These families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten thousand.