Top 98 Aristocratic Quotes & Sayings

American political scions evoke a central contradiction in our thinking. We believe - or say we do - in nurture, not nature. Yet we are comforted by the aristocratic notion that leadership might run in the bloodlines.

It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

We certainly grew up and had opportunities. But it's not like our parents are aristocratic blue bloods.

For me, aesthetically, Donatella Versace represent what the Italian woman is. There is always the American rock thing, the aristocratic, above-the-rest British manner, but Italy is at the heart of it.

I really don’t feel exclusiveMy ambition instead, perhaps because of my peasant-worker background, is to look at the world with others, not as an aristocratic intellectual.

Fashion is aristocratic-autocratic.

Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.

There is no doubt that sorrow brings one down in the world. The aristocratic privilege of silence belongs, you soon find out, to only the happy state- or, at least, to the state when pain keeps within bounds.

I have to struggle to change people's perceptions of me. I grew very frustrated with the perception that I'm this shy, retiring, inhibited aristocratic creature when I'm absolutely not like that at all. I think I'm much more outgoing and exuberant than my image.

I find the aristocratic parts of London so unattractive and angular; the architecture is so white and gated. But in New York, it's different - even uptown it's really grand, and there's no real segregation there. It's all mixed up.

In aristocratic societies, rich people used to commission exquisite paintings for their walls.

Too little is it considered, while we gaze on aristocratic beauty, how much good food, soft lying, warm wrapping, ease of mind, have to do with the attractions which command our admiration.

The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly; an aristocratic council; or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.

Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.

Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular.

Our traditional stories are based on an aristocratic model without a middle class, whereas The Arabian Nights reflect people living in cities, traders, merchants, travelers, with a wide range of personalities.

Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

One main condition of aristocratic life was present in the South and not in the North--personal responsibility to other human beings for education and material welfare. (A Carnegie or a Ford, like a bureaucracy, molds the lives of millions without taking any responsibility.)

History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

Five or six hundred [aristocratic] heads lopped off would have assured you repose and happiness; a false humanity has restrained your arm and suspended your blows; it will cost the lives of millions of your brothers.

Polo has always had an old-fashioned, aristocratic English feel.

Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one.

What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.

Aristocratic depression has this cosmic dimension to it, where it's asking these big questions about, "Why?" "What is the purpose of all this?" Neuroses of the middle class is the banishment of aristocratic depression, because it's kind of this obsession with quotidian detail that pushes these larger questions away.

'A Rogue by Any Other Name' is the first book in the 'Rules of Scoundrels' series, centered on a legendary pre-Victorian casino and her four scandalous aristocratic owners.

I'm actually as common as mud. I'm not particularly well read, or bred. But the way I look... I seem to have this sort of 'aristocratic' demeanor.

An aristocratic culture does not advertise its emotions. In its forms of expression it is sober and reserved. Its general attitude is stoic.

If I could have picked an era to have lived, I think I would've loved to have been one of Louis XIV's mistresses. They were so fantastic and aristocratic, and they had so much power. And he was such a renaissance man. I think I would've fit into that nicely.

Occasionally, when I lived in London, I would have sex with a girl from an aristocratic family. I always enjoyed doing to them what their ancestors did to my country.

I do keep getting these bad girl roles. The funny thing is that, honestly, I don't think I'm believable as these aristocratic mean girls. But I do love playing them.

It is no longer simply the merchant prince, or the aristocratic monopoly, or even the employing class, that is exploiting the world: it is the nation, a new democratic nation composed of united capital and labor.

Courts are an aristocratic institution in a democracy. That's the dilemma for an institution that has the function of reviewing the will of the people. We're bound to be "anti-majoritarian."

You don't have to be born wealthy and have an aristocratic last name or have connections or all these things. If you have a dream, you can believe in something and work hard and struggle and fight for it and still have a chance to succeed.

Everyone should be taught the nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity.

I had displeased the jacobins by blaming their aristocratic usurpation of legitimate powers; the priests of all sorts by claiming religious liberty; the anarchists by repressing them; and the conspirators by rejecting their offers.

In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.

Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.

The other guy I dug a lot was Burroughs because he was a smart man already; he learned it through the druggie pool - the street scene of an old aristocratic kind of man.

The prevailing conception is that education must be such as will enable one to acquire enough wealth to live on the plane of the bourgeoisie. That kind of education does not develop the aristocratic virtues. It neither encourages reflection nor inspires reverence for the good.

I've played a lot of very posh, sort of noble or aristocratic English people, which is nothing like what I am, so I feel that there is quite a lot distance there and have played a little bit far away from myself.

The greatest sin of the academic left is that it has become fundamentally aristocratic, writing in bizarre jargon that makes cliches seem abstruse. If you can't explain your ideal to a fairly intelligent 12-year-old, it's probably your own fault.

Slavery is malignantly aristocratic.

My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

Though, with the ascendancy of Louis, the political power of the nobles finally came to an end, France remained, in the whole complexion of her social life, completely aristocratic.

The gitano is the most distinguished, profound and aristocratic element in my country, the one that most represents its Way of being and best preserves the fire, the blood and the alphabet of Andalusian and universal truth.

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.

The aristocratic mind ... is anti-analytical. It is concerned more with the status of being than with the demonstrable relationship of parts.

In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as "Barias" [Amharic for slave]... let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!

By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature.

I was not interested in luxuries because I had an elegant life as a child. My family, very aristocratic, one of the richest in Colombia, educated me like a princess, in the English style.

All the people at university were very aristocratic - except me, because I was on scholarship. And everyone there voluntarily wore suits and ties every day. And this was in the '60s!

[ Massachusetts constitution] was [John Adams] attempt to justify that structure by the traditional notion of social estates - that the executive represented the monarchical estate, the senate the aristocratic estate, and the house of representatives the estate of the people.

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

The parliamentary principle of vesting legislative power in the decision of the majority rejects the authority of the individual and puts a numerical quota of anonymous heads in its place. In doing so it contradicts the aristocratic principle, which is a fundamental law of nature.

It is the clash of two different worlds that makes British-ness unique - we have an aristocratic, noble history, but it is always contrasted with something rebellious.

My parents are really conservative. My dad is Muslim, and my mom is the most conservative woman you've ever met. They're very aristocratic in the most quaint suburban way.