Alexander Pope Quotes

The British have turned their sense of humour into a national virtue. It is odd, because through much of history, humour has been considered cheap, and laughter something for the lower orders. But British aristocrats didn't care a damn about what people thought of them, so they made humour acceptable.

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

I was no Marie Antoinette. I was not born to nobility, but I had a human right to nobility.

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

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

Literature, of course, is not a contest.

Americans sometimes say to me that they have no class system themselves. All human beings have class systems. It can be based on a different thing in a different country, but the thing about breeding is, you can't buy it. You can't buy class.

Poetry is a pure meritocracy. There's no room for ambiguity: either a poem moves you and opens up new vistas in life, or it doesn't. It's completely objective, and the best always rise to the top.

I was not to the manor born.

It would astonish if not amuse the older citizens to learn that I (a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working at ten dollars per month) have been put down as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.

'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.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.

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.

Chivalry only worked with men of the same class.

A Plowman on his knees is higher than a Gentleman on his legs.

Class has always been Tom Wolfe's subject, and I suspect the reason for much of the disfavor in which he is held.

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 have concluded that Literature is no proper pursuit for a gentleman and that Writing ought never to be consider'd but as an elegant Accomplishment to be indulg'd in with infrequency and Discrimination.

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.

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

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

Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters.