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

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 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 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