Aristocracy has three successive ages. First superiority s, then privileges and finally vanities. Having passed from the first, it degenerates in the second and dies in the third. – Vicomte De Chateaubriand
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
I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts. – Oliver Goldsmith
What is the use of your pedigrees? – Juvenal
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
Lords are lordliest in their wine. – John Milton
An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead. – Nancy Mitford
I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for Tis only to them that they are blessings. – Mary Wortley Montagu
Aristocracy is always cruel. – Wendell Phillips
It is nobler to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good — and less trouble! – Mark Twain
You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done. – Oscar Wilde
Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England. – Virginia Woolf
