Lauren Willig Quotes

I always wanted so much glamour in my life, so I have always been obsessed with class, and from dating a few people who were from old money and a few from new money in my 20s, I just sort of became obsessed with this idea of clueless rich people.

I don't go to royal parties or play polo on horseback. No, I don't hang out with the posh crowd, if that makes sense.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

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.

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

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

I was not to the manor born.

It's the weird thing Eton does - you're at school next to lords and earls and, in my case, Prince William, so you end up being used to dealing with those sorts of people.

I'm not posh, not in the slightest. My parents spent some money on my education, but I wasn't born to the purple.

'Posh' is not really political. I didn't want to aim a brickbat at the system. Or to bash Old Etonians. It was always the class and privilege aspect of that world that I was most drawn to. There is something endlessly fascinating about imagining something you could never be involved in.

Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.

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.

Our ideas of the life and business of a soldier were drawn chiefly from the adventures of Ivanhoe and Charles O'Malley, two worthies with whose personal history almost every man in the army was familiar. The men who volunteered went to war of their own accord, and were wholly unaccustomed to acting on any other than their own motion…. Their officers were of themselves, chosen by election, and subject, by custom, to enforced resignation upon petition of the men…. There was one sort of rank, however, which was both maintained and respected from the first, namely, that of social life. The line of demarkation between gentry and common people … rests … upon an indeterminate something or other, known as family. To come of a good family is a patent of nobility, and there is no other way whatever by which any man or any woman can find a passage into the charmed circle.

Trade is so far here from being inconsistent with a gentleman, that, in short, trade in England makes gentlemen; for, after a generation or two, the tradesmen's children, or at least their grandchildren, come to be as good;, gentlemen, statesmen, parliament-men, privy-councilors, judges, bishops, and noblemen, as those of the highest birth, and the most ancient families.

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

I don't think I met anyone posh until I went to London.

I think poshness is very funny! But I think it's also delightful. There's something wonderful and very innocent about it, particularly with the Edwardians.

You're a socialite because you're born into it. That's not what I want.

Wherever the appearance of a conventional aristocracy exists in America, it must arise from wealth, as it cannot from birth. An aristocracy of mere wealth is vulgar everywhere. In a republic, it is vulgar in the extreme.

There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes.

England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.

Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.

Snobbery has gone out of fashion, and in our shops you will find duchesses jostling with typists to buy the same dress.