Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it. – G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

A fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and dukes are just as great a terror — and they last longer. – David Lloyd George

All that is noble is in itself of a quiet nature, and appears to sleep until it is aroused and summoned forth by contrast. – Johann von Goethe