Servant Culture Quotes

I come from a family of servants. My father's father was a servant, and my father's father's father was a slave.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

Every great house is full of haughty servants.

Americans assume all British people have at least one servant.

There's nothing undignified about lying about all day and being waited on by servants, sipping bloody champagne.

I think people are always going to be fascinated about the haves and have nots - about the divide between the servants and the rich families upstairs.

If we were in India now, there would be servants standing in the corners of this room and I wouldn't notice them. That is what my society is like, that is what the divide is like.

The Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy. The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause before uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have spared the feelings of him the bearer.

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne.

His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants hall.

A good many causes tend to make good masters and mistresses quite as rare as good servants.... The large and rapid fortunes by which vulgar and ignorant people become possessed of splendid houses, splendidly furnished, do not, of course, give them the feelings and manners of gentle folks, or in any way really raise them above the servants they employ, who are quite aware of this fact, and that the possession of wealth is literally the only superiority their employers have over them.

In big houses in which things are done properly, there is always the religious element. The diurnal cycle is observed with more feeling when there are servants to do the work.