"Noblesse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compare such great things with social follies, Castanier's position was not unlike that of a banker who, finding that his all-powerful millions cannot obtain for him an entrance into the society of the noblesse, must set his heart upon entering that circle, and all the social privileges that he has already acquired are as nothing in his eyes from the moment when he discovers that a single ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... rugged, determined men and women, governed by powerful prejudices and iron conventions, types of a military people, in whom the sense of duty has been cultivated until it dominates all other motives, and in whom the principle of 'noblesse oblige' is, so far as the aristocratic class is concerned, the fundamental rule of conduct. What such people may be capable of is startlingly shown."—New ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... villages and territories a few miles south of that city. See History of New York during the Revolutionary War, by Thomas Jones, edited by Edward Floyd De Lancey, vol i., p. 651, and Dictionnaire de la Noblesse de France, ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... distinguished members of society and art and letters at her own house, giving concerts where Gretry, whose portrait she painted, and other celebrated musicians played portions of their operas before they were seen or heard upon the stage; whilst the grandees of the old noblesse and the famous wits frequented ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... monde; I am not now, either, but we sometimes meet. They are terrible people—her monde; all mounted upon stilts a mile high, and with pedigrees long in proportion. It is the skim of the milk of the old noblesse. Do you know what a Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane? Go into Madame de Cintre's drawing-room some afternoon, at five o'clock, and you will see the best preserved specimens. I say go, but no one is admitted who ...
— The American • Henry James
... sad perplexitie, The whole atchievement of this doubtfull warre, Came running fast to greet his victorie, With sober gladnesse, and myld modestie, 230 And with sweet joyous cheare him thus bespake: Faire braunch of noblesse, flowre of chevalrie, That with your worth the world amazed make, How shall I quite the paines ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... She could place no confidence in the feudal levies that gathered when the royal standard was raised. The Hamiltons merely looked to their own advancement; Lord James Stewart was bound to the Congregation; Huntly was a double dealer and was remote; the minor noblesse and the armed burghers, with Glencairn representing the south-west, Lollard from of old, were attached to Knox's doctrines, while the mob would flock ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... life. This was no question of capacity or achievement. By the accident of birth alone they had been put in a position different from other men. How shall each in his wisdom or his folly interpret that well-worn motto which still has virtue both to quicken and control, "Noblesse oblige"? ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... flourished in splendour and in honour. I do not like to see anything destroyed; any void produced in society; any ruin on the face of the land. It was therefore with no disappointment or dissatisfaction that my inquiries and observations did not present to me any incorrigible vices in the noblesse of France, or any abuse which could not be removed by a reform very short of abolition. Your noblesse did not deserve punishment: but to ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... loquacious. For what then, he would ask, was this incompetence, this imbecility, of France? He would tell. It was the vile corruption of Paris, the grasping of capital and companies, the fatal influence of the still clinging noblesse, and the insidious Jesuitical power of the priests. As for example, Monsieur "the Booflo-bil" had doubtless noticed the great gates of the park before the cafe? It was the preserve,—the hunting-park of one of the old grand seigneurs, still kept up by his descendants, the Comtes de Fontonelles—hundreds ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... ultimate history created no small sensation, when it came to be known in the Prussian army. If beauty and courage are proofs of nobility, as (although I have seen some of the ugliest dogs and the greatest cowards in the world in the noblesse) I have no doubt courage and beauty are, this Frenchman must have been of the highest families in France, so grand and noble was his manner, so superb his person. He was not quite so tall as myself, fair, while I am dark, and, if ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... embroidery, he bestowed on the dying savage the name of Joseph, in honor of the spouse of the Virgin and the patron of New France. [ Le Jeune, Relation, 1636, 5 (Cramoisy). "Monsieur le Gouverneur se transporte aux Cabanes de ces pauures barbares, suivy d'une leste Noblesse. Je vous laisse penser quel estonnement ces Peuples de voir tant d'carlate, tant de personnes bien faites sous leurs toits d'corce!" ] Three days after, he was told that a dead proselyte was to be buried; on which, leaving the lines of the new fortification ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... credit to their discretion, or regard to truth, she determined to give concerts, though she had neither ear nor taste for music; conversazioni, though she had no talents for conversation; and to outvie, if possible, in the gaieties of her parties and the magnificence of her liveries, all the noblesse of Venice. This blissful reverie was somewhat obscured, when she recollected the Signor, her husband, who, though he was not averse to the profit which sometimes results from such parties, had always shewn a contempt of the frivolous parade that sometimes attends them; till she considered ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... supplementary, and wilfully omitted, facts, of this ideal,—oppose, as I fairly might, the discomforts of a modern cheap excursion train, to the chariot-and-four, with outriders and courier, of ancient noblesse. I will compare only the actual facts, in the former and in latter years, of my own journey from Paris to Geneva. As matters are now arranged, I find myself, at half past eight in the evening, waiting in a confused ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... peasants of the plebeians of France. Accordingly, in spite of all that has happened, you see the people come back to me. There is sympathy between us. It is not as with the privileged classes. The noblesse have been in my service; they thronged in crowds into my antechambers. There is no place that they have not accepted or solicited. I have had the Montmorencys, the Noailles, the Rohans, the Beauveaus, the Montemarts, in my train. But there never ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... old noblesse had recovered as to manners and customs something of the prestige it had irrevocably lost in politics. Moreover, the sentiment which governs parents and grandparents in all that relates to matrimonial conventions is an imperishable sentiment, closely allied to the very ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... conduit dans son gouvernement de la ville de Valence, que le roi, le jugeant propre a remplir une plus grande place, l'avoit nomme a la viceroyaute d'Aragon. D'ailleurs, ajouta-t-il, cette dignite n'est point au-dessus de votre naissance, et la noblesse Aragonoise ne sauroit murmurer contre le choix ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... great central mass of the population in France known as the bourgeoisie—who may be roughly defined as those that belong neither to the noblesse at one end nor to the industrials and peasant proprietors at the other, but have capital, however minute, invested in rentes or business, and who, beginning with the grande bourgeoisie, the haughty possessors of ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... more striking kind marked the extinction of the feudal character of the noblesse. Gloomy walls and serried battlements disappeared from the dwellings of the gentry. The strength of the mediaeval fortress gave way to the pomp and grace of the Elizabethan Hall. Knole, Longleat, Burleigh and Hatfield, Hardwick and Audley End, are familiar instances of a social ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... misjudged you, and I ask your pardon,"—he bowed gravely. "Miss Lingard," he went on, "is an absolutely trustful heart. She has not learned the hard lessons of life. As for you and me, noblesse ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... second Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac, the author of the maxims, was one of the most illustrious members of the most illustrious families among the French noblesse. Descended from the ancient Dukes of Guienne, the founder of the Family Fulk or Foucauld, a younger branch of the House of Lusignan, was at the commencement of the eleventh century the Seigneur of a small ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... Il est aise d'en marquer la difference sans parler de celle du stile qui dans Pindare a toujours plus de force, plus d'energie, & plus de noblesse que dans Horace, &c. Mem. ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... first. Best of all, it filled him with warm gratitude to remember that none of his fellows had grudged him any of his good things. What a decent lot they were! It humbled him to think of their pride in him. He would not disappoint them. Noblesse oblige. ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... assisted by the numerous army and fleet of France, who, irritated at the loss of the Canadas, wished to humiliate England by the loss of her own American possessions. But little did the French king and his noblesse imagine, that in upholding the principles of the Americans, and allowing the French armies and navies (I may say the people of France en masse) to be imbued with the same principles of equality, that they were sowing the seeds of a revolution in their own country ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... Bishop of Nancy commenced, as customary, with the prayer: 'Receive, O God, the homage of the Clergy, the respects of the Noblesse, and the humble supplications of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... consequence of holding that post, he has for him all the parliament, as he has all the army by his largesses, literature by his favors, and the noblesse by his presents." ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... occupied the seat just behind with myself and Amelia. The Doctor talked most of the time to Lady Vandrift: his discourse was of picture-galleries, which Amelia detests, but in which she thinks it incumbent upon her, as Sir Charles's wife, to affect now and then a cultivated interest. Noblesse oblige; and the walls of Castle Seldon, our place in Ross-shire, are almost covered now with Leaders and with Orchardsons. This result was first arrived at by a singular accident. Sir Charles wanted a leader—for his coach, you understand—and told an artistic ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... soldier of his time came so fine a showing of the noblesse of France, fresh from the most brilliant court of Europe, that they are worth a short description. They are interesting, if from nothing else, from the fact that they are the men who appear on the page of history one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... the cards were to be paid. I do not think that the people who frequent Brooks's will suffer this pillage another campaign. Trusty was there to go into the chair, when he should be called upon. I told him that I was extremely sorry that he had quitted the Corps de Noblesse pour se jetter dans le Commerce; but it is at present his only resource. I cannot help thinking that, notwithstanding our late disasters, Bob's(183) political tenants will be very tardy in remitting him their rents. But between Foley House, and ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... We did nothing from morning till night but electioneer for the Honourable Billy, and kissed all the babies in the borough. The mothers were so grateful. Now, Edith, do tell Jack instead of playing tennis and canoeing all day he ought to help. It's the duty of all young men to help. Noblesse oblige, you know. I can't understand Victoria. She really has influence with these country people, but she says it's all nonsense. Sometimes I think Victoria has a common streak in her—and no wonder. The other day she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... person by lettres de cachet; the cruelty of the criminal code generally; the atrocities of the rack; the venality of Judges, and their partialities to the rich; the monopoly of military honors by the noblesse; the enormous expenses of the Queen, the Princes, and the Court; the prodigalities of pensions; and the riches, luxury, indolence, and immorality of the Clergy. Surely under such a mass of misrule and oppression, a people ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... glance, from words of modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry, their inter-marriages, distant relationships, and the extent to which they were admitted, and offices they held, among the national noblesse of words at any time, and in any country. But an uneducated person may know, by memory, many languages, and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any,—not a word even of his own. An ordinarily clever and sensible seaman will be ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... an excursion into Normandy that they had met Mademoiselle de Maligny, the daughter of an impoverished gentleman of the chetive noblesse of that province. Both had loved her. She had preferred—as women will—the outward handsomeness of Viscount Rotherby to the sounder heart and brain that were Dick Everard's. As bold and dominant as any ruffler of them all where men and perils ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... added the cross, generally worn in Europe by canonesses only: a distinction procur'd for them by their founder, St. Vallier, the second bishop of Quebec. The house is, without, a very noble building; and neatness, elegance and propriety reign within. The nuns, who are all of the noblesse, are many of them handsome, and all genteel, lively, and well bred; they have an air of the world, their conversation is easy, spirited, and polite: with them you almost forget the recluse in the woman of condition. In short, you have ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... Prince and a German Grand Duke, and above and all around was a crowd of travelers of all nations. He brought no letters. He desired no acquaintances. Florence, under the new regime, was too much agitated by recent changes for its noblesse to pay any attention to a stranger, however distinguished, unless he was forced upon them; and so Lord Chetwynde had the most complete isolation. If Hilda had ever had any ideas of going with Lord Chetwynde into Florentine society she was soon undeceived, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... faire voir l'isle et ses habitans avec satisfaction. Si vous ne trouvez pas M. Buttafoco, et que vous vouliez aller tout droit a M. Pascal de Paoli general de la nation, vous pouvez egalement lui montrer cette lettre, et je suis sur, connoissant la noblesse de son caractere, que vous serez tres-content de son accueil: vous pourrez lui dire meme que vous etes aime de Mylord Mareschal d'Ecosse, et que Mylord Mareschal est un des plus zeles partizans de la ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... in his "French Revolution" paints a wonderfully vivid picture of the idle, voluptuous noblesse of the eighteenth century: compare the views of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... E.E.T.S. The "Ayenbite" is the work of Dan Michel, of Northgate, Kent, who belonged to "the bochouse of Saynt Austines of Canterberi." The work deals with the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, informs us that "the sothe noblesse comth of the gentyl herte ... ase to the bodye: alle we byeth children of one moder, thet is of erthe" (p. 87). Some of the chapters of Lorens's "Somme" were adapted by ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... by the beauty, and, if I may use the word about a plain man, the majesty of his looks. My companion was struck, too, for he stopped short, and murmured something under his breath; I heard the word "Noblesse," and thought it not amiss. My father's eyes (they were extraordinarily bright and blue) were wide open, and looked through us and beyond us, yet saw nothing, or nothing that other eyes could see; the tender look was in them that meant the thought of my mother. ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... flinching, and finally, in the early days of October, saw the Saxon Duke and his army march away, Valmy having opened the eyes of Brunswick to the utter futility and fanfaronnade of the French emigrant noblesse and princes, who had drawn up for him and persuaded him against his own better judgment to sign the too famous and fatal proclamation with which he heralded the Austro-Prussian advance into France. Mayor Andre having thus saved the grand North-eastern ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... a tour to Narbonne, which lasted nearly a year. Doubtless, the opportunities which this journey afforded him, of comparing the manners and follies of the royal court and of the city of Paris, with those which he found still existing in the provincial towns and among the rural noblesse, were not lost upon the poet by whose satirical power they ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... that child, and I thought of the women that I had known—the bold, bedizened beauties of a Court said to be the first in Europe. And then it came to me that this was no demoiselle of Lavedan, no demoiselle at all in fact, for the noblesse of France owned no such faces. Candour and purity were not to be looked for in the high-bred countenances of our great families; they were sometimes found in the faces of the children of their retainers. ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Their children could acquire beneath her roof the education they desired for them, and there it ended. If, as rumor stated, she really came of gentle Northern blood it must have received a very peculiar infusion in her immediate forebears. They missed something of the noblesse oblige which was to them as a matter of course. So with each passing year the gulf had imperceptibly widened until Miss Woodhull was as much alone in hospitable Virginia as though ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of her which men have agreed to call character. She could not love him as he wished, but she had an immeasurable respect for him. And she knew that above all the other virtues he placed courage, moral and physical. Noblesse oblige. He would never fail. He considered it an obligation on those who were born in what he still thought of as the ruling class to hold their heads high in fearlessness. And in her blood, too, ran something of ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... decoy-duck the whole covey! You generous? No more not generous than the son of a seigneur, mine enemy! You give life? He give life! You give liberty! So does Louis! You help one able help himself? Louis help one not able help himself! Ha! Tres bien! Noblesse oblige! La Gloire! She—near! She here! She where I, Louis Laplante, son of a seigneur, snare that she-devil, trap that fox, trick the tigress! Ha—ol' tombstone! Noblesse oblige—I say! She near—she here," and he flung up both ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... isle that I have spoken of, there is another isle that is clept Sumobor. That is a great isle, and the king thereof is right mighty. The folk of that isle make them always to be marked in the visage with an hot iron, both men and women, for great noblesse, for to be known from other folk; for they hold themselves most noble and most worthy of all the world. And they have war always with the folk ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... imagination and invention," offered in their insipid artificialities nothing but "rhetoric, bombast, fleurs de college, and Latin-verse poetry," clothed "borrowed ideas in trumpery imagery," and presented themselves with a "conventional elegance and noblesse than which there was nothing more common." On the other hand, the works of the master-minds of England, Germany, Spain, and Italy, which were more and more translated and read, opened new, undreamt-of vistas. The Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare began now to ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... illustre et magnificque Fleur de noblesse exquise et redolente Dame dhonneur princesse pacifique Salut a ta maieste precellente Tes seruiteurs par voye raisonnable Tant iusticiers que le peuple amyable. De amyens cite dicte de amenite Recomandant sont par humilite Leur bien publicque ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... myself that to this day I cannot tell how I came to know that theirs was an ancient family. No reference to it from their own lips can I recall; certainly no boast, except the tranquil boast of proud serenity and noble bearing, and the noblesse oblige of ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Beaumarchais' Marriage de Figaro, representative of one of the old noblesse of France, recalling all their manners and vices, who is duped by his valet Figaro, a personification of wit, talent, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of man. The whole biblical chronology as held by the universal Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," he sacrificed, and gave all his powers in this field to support the theory of "the Fall." Noblesse oblige: the duke and his ancestors had been for centuries the chief pillars of the Church of Scotland, and it was too much to expect that he could break away from a tenet which forms ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... tresplaisante Hystoire du tresnoble, victori, et excellentissime roy Perceforest, Roy de la Grand Bretaigne, fundateur du Francpalais et du temple du souverain Dieu. En laquelle lecture pourra veoir la source et decoration de toute Chevalerie, culture de vraye Noblesse, Prouesses, &c. Avecques plusieurs propheties, Comptes Damans, et leur divers fortunes. Lettres Gothiques, 6 tom. en 3 fol., Paris, chez Galliot du ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... right, whether you use your title or not," said Franco. "Noblesse is in the bone. You can't get rid ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Hummel and Field. The passage work is superior in design to that of the earlier masters, the general character episodical,—but episodes of rare worth and originality. As Ehlert says, "Noblesse oblige—and thus Chopin felt himself compelled to satisfy all demands exacted of a pianist, and wrote the unavoidable piano concerto. It was not consistent with his nature to express himself in broad ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... temperament and education. Washington Irving wrote of her in November, 1812, that she was 'the most stylish woman in the drawing-room that session, and that she dressed with more splendor than any other of the noblesse;' and again the same year compared her with the wife of the President, whose courtly manners and consummate tact and grace are a tradition of the republican court. "Tell your good lady," mother Irving wrote to James Renwick, "that Mrs. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... accomplished scholar,—the aspiring politician. It was one of those petits soupers for which the capital of all social pleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, was literary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of the ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse—for the noblesse yet existed, though its hours were already numbered—added to the charm of the society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The noblesse have now quite deserted the Irish capital. Besides the lord-chancellor, there is probably not a single peer occupying a house there to-day. Houses are excellent and very cheap. An immense mansion in the best situation can be had for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... again and forgot her until he was roused by the clapping of many hands. First-nighters always applaud, no matter how perfunctorily. Noblesse oblige. But the difference between the applause of the bored but loyal and that of the enchanted and quickened is as the difference between a rising breeze ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... primogeniture by the Revolution and the Code Napoleon. They are proud to transmit their title untarnished to their descendants, are ready to make serious sacrifices in its behalf, to exercise the rigid self-denials of family control for its sake, and to engrave the motto of "noblesse oblige" on their hearts in order to sustain it; but they bitterly complain that without the majorat, and the transmission of outward, visible supports in land and houses to strengthen it, the empty sound carries little weight. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... greasy, they will govern you, when their time comes," said Augustine; "and they will be just such rulers as you make them. The French noblesse chose to have the people 'sans culottes,' and they had 'sans culotte' governors to their hearts' ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with thee? No; get thee far away From me, foul Marian, fair though thou be nam'd; For thy bewitching eyes have raised storms, That have my name and noblesse ever sham'd; Prince John, my dear friend once, is now for thee ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... first pony in political tradition, and encouraged by every gamekeeper to follow the footsteps of his ancestors, Lord Runnymede had inevitably taken "Noblesse oblige" as his private motto. But of what service was nobility if its obligations were abolished? He sometimes pictured with a shudder the fate of the surviving French nobility—retaining their titles by courtesy, and compelled to fritter away their ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... limpide, a la levre mince et legerement sarcastique, autour de laquelle errait un fin sourire, et dont le vaste front, estompe de deux touffes de cheveux blancs sur les cotes, relevait d'un cachet de noblesse et de distinction la physionomie petillante d'esprit et de malice. Les habits, son jabot de dentelle, sa cravate blanche rappelaient un vieillard de la fin du regne de Louis XV; ses manieres etaient celles d'un homme de bonne compagnie. Habituellement reserve ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... spoken of, there is another yle, that is clept Sumobor, that is a gret yle: and the kyng thereof is righte myghty. The folk of that yle maken hem alweys to ben marked in the visage with an hote yren, bothe men and wommen, for gret noblesse, for to ben knowen from other folk. For thei holden hem self most noble and most worthi of alle the world. And thei han werre alle weys with the folk that gon alle naked. And faste besyde is another yle, that is clept Betemga, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... throne: he has established nobility. The Republic having abolished all titles, a peerage was, for a while, impossible. But he has formed a military Caste, which, without hazarding his popularity with the Parisians, increases his popularity with the troops, and has all the advantages of a noblesse, with all the dependency of its members on the head of the State. He has named this Institution the Legion of Honour. It is to consist of several classes, the first comprehending the great officers of state, generals who have distinguished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... proverbs and aphorisms as "noblesse oblige," "bon sang ne sait mentir," "bon chien chasse de race," etc., and had even invented a little aphorism of his own, to comfort him when he was extra hard up, "bon gentilhomme n'a jamais honte de la misere." All of which sayings, to do him justice, he reserved for home consumption exclusively, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the happiness of the French in their subordination, by the reciprocal benevolence and attachment between the great and those in lower rank. Mr Boyd gave us an instance of their gentlemanly spirit. An old Chevalier de Malthe, of ancient noblesse, but in low circumstances, was in a coffee-house at Paris, where was Julien, the great manufacturer at the Gobelins, of the fine tapestry, so much distinguished both for the figures and the colours. The chevalier's carriage was very old. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... plupart de la gendarmerie, qu'une valeur malheureuse et une armure pesante arretaient dans un lieu ou l'un et l'autre leur etaient inutiles. Longtemps apres l'on s'apercevait dans toutes les provinces voisines que l'elite de la noblesse avait peri dans cette fatale journee. L'infanterie beaucoup moins engagee dans le defile, vit en tremblant la defaite des chevaliers qui passaient pour invincibles, et dont les escadrons effrayes se renversaient sur ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... only passed by small majorities, and the majorities would have been transformed into minorities, if in the early days of the Revolution these unworthy men had only stood firm at their posts. Selfish oligarchies have scarcely ever been wanting in courage. The emigrant noblesse of France are almost the only instance of a great privileged and territorial caste that had as little bravery as they had patriotism. The explanation is that they had been an oligarchy, not of power or duty, but of self-indulgence. They were crushed by Richelieu to secure the unity of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... exclusively of the 'West End.' You have lived among the English; enter now into my society." Mde. Fee smiled, and Mde. de Rheims taking a look at me continued: "The stock is incomparable out of France. Remember, my child, that your ancestors were grande noblesse," haughtily raising her head. A novel feeling of distinction was added to my ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... was made up were still more remarkable. Ministers and Opposition; ambassadors, travellers, journalists; the men of fashion and the men of reform; here a French republican official, and beyond him, perhaps, a man whose ancestors were already of the most ancient noblesse in Saint-Simon's day; artists, great and small, men of letters good and indifferent; all these had been among the guests of Madame d'Estrees, brought to the house, each of them, for some quality's sake, some power of keeping up ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all Huguenots; yet again, as before, the staple of the projected colony was unsound: soldiers, paid out of the royal treasury, hired artisans and tradesmen, joined with a swarm of volunteers from the young Huguenot noblesse, whose restless swords had rusted in their scabbards since the peace. The foundation-stone was left out. There were no tillers of the soil. Such, indeed, were rare among the Huguenots; for the dull peasants who guided the plough clung with blind tenacity to the ancient ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... state of France, on hearing the clergy and the noblesse were privileged in point of taxation, may be led to imagine, that, previous to the Revolution, these bodies had contributed nothing to the state. This is a great mistake. They certainly did not contribute equally with each other, nor either of them equally with the commons. They both, however, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... two quarrels can be more distinct. Riches—so far from being necessary to noblesse—are adverse to it. So utterly adverse, that the first character of all the Nobilities which have founded great dynasties in the world is to be poor;—often poor by oath—always poor by generosity. And of every true knight in the chivalric ages, the first thing history tells ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the seventh day Is famous for a grand display Of modes, of finery, and dress, Of cit, west-ender, and noblesse, Who in Hyde Park crowd like a fair To stare, and lounge, and take the air, Or ride or drive, or walk, and chat On fashions, scandal, and all that.— Here, reader, with your leave, will we Commence our ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... [Footnote E: The clergy, noblesse, and the 'tiers etat' met at Notre Dame on the 4th May 1789. On the following day, at Versailles, the 'tiers etat' assumed the title of the 'National Assembly'—constituting themselves the sovereign power—and invited ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... matter. However, he whispered it about that Lisle Court was in the market; and as it really was one of the most celebrated places of its kind in England, the whisper spread among bankers and brewers and soap-boilers and other rich people—the Medici of the New Noblesse rising up amongst us—till at last it reached ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said to be derived from uomo and to signify manliness in the sense of power of endurance, the power, for example, of keeping silence even under torture; hence it comes to be used for an exaggeration of that natural sense of honour, that Noblesse Oblige or Decency Forbids, which makes an English schoolboy scorn to become a sneak. It may be false and foolish, it may be noble and chivalrous, whatever it is, they say, it has such a firm growth among them because ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... becomes a case of NOBLESSE OBLIGE," he declared. "If it is worth doing at all it is worth doing well. To-day the Sultan will command that the 'Rise and Fall' be translated into Arabic, and that it be placed in the national library. Moreover, the University of ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... all the noblesse of the provinces, of the environs, and wherever messengers had carried the news, were seen to arrive. D'Artagnan had shut himself up, without being willing to speak to anybody. Two such heavy deaths falling upon the captain, so closely after the death of Porthos, for ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... if a detachment of the Garde Republicaine had not been dispatched to our neighborhood of Sarre Louis, where it was supposed some lurking regard for royalty yet lingered. These fellows neither knew nor cared for the ancient noblesse of the country, and one evening a patrol of them stopped my father as he was taking his evening walk along the ramparts. He would scarcely deign to notice the insolent 'Qui va la!' of the sentry, a summons he at least thought superfluous in a town ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... with the leste of hir stature, But alle hir limes so wel answeringe Weren to womanhode, that creature Was neuer lasse mannish in seminge. And eek the pure wyse of here meninge 285 Shewede wel, that men might in hir gesse Honour, estat, and wommanly noblesse. ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Corday d'Armont was the daughter of a landless squire of Normandy, a member of the chetive noblesse, a man of gentle birth, whose sadly reduced fortune may have predisposed him against the law of entail or primogeniture—the prime cause of the inequality out of which were sprung so many of the evils that afflicted France. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Band agreed that he was a finished type of gentleman-hood. Even Raoul's sisters had to confess, with a certain disgust, that, whatever people may say, in our own day the aristocracy of wealth has to lower its flag before the authentic quarterings of the old noblesse. They secretly envied Giselle because she was going to be a grande dame, while all the while they asserted that old-fashioned distinctions had no longer any meaning. Nevertheless, they looked forward to the day when they, too, might take their places in the Faubourg St. Germain. One may purchase ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... to themselves. The ruffian whom we read of, a little time ago, who stabbed a young woman because she was breaking from him to take the arm of another man whom she preferred, acted upon the principle of the ministers, the noblesse, and the clergy of France. They could no longer unjustly possess, therefore they would destroy. They saw that if a just government were established; that if the people were fairly represented in a national council; they saw that if this were to take place, they would no longer ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... declaimers. When Hardy and Horne Took, were the priests, what must be the worshippers at the Jacobin shrine? But in France, the temple of that idol of confusion was crowded with the chiefs of the Noblesse, the Church, the Law; headed by the Prince of the blood next to the throne; all stimulated by a ferocity of folly unexampled in the history of infatuation, and all unconsciously urged to their ruin by a race of beings inferior in rank, and almost objects of their scorn, yet, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... of Orleans, Burgundy, Bourbon, and Cleves: the Count of Charolois, eldest son of the Duke of Burgundy; the Counts of Angoulesme, St Paul, Dunois, and others; with, as a chronicle of the time relates, "autres comtes, barons, chevaliers, capitaines, et force noblesse, en tres bel ordre et posture." All of these were mounted on horses of price, richly caparisoned, and covered with the finest housings; some were of cloth of gold furred with sable, others were of velvet or damask furred with ermine; all were enriched with precious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the time that anything like social life, as we understand the phrase, became known, the power of the Crown was so well established that no necessity for resorting to a policy such as Richelieu's for diminishing the influence of the noblesse existed. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... a slight attempt, evidently a painful one, to explain to us, as strangers, the purpose of their unusual meeting. It was simply, that "the emigrant noblesse, who had already experienced so much heroic hospitality from their English friends, thought that the time was come when they ought to be burdens on them no longer. The letters from France are dreadful," said she, "and it will be our duty to show, that as we have enjoyed prosperity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... merite ce litre par la force de son ame, la droiture de son coeur, la noblesse de ses intentions, la sagesse de ses conseils, le courage de ses demarches, l'etendue de ses connaissances, et la vivacite de son esprit),—ce grand homme, qui excitera l'admiration de tous ceux qu'une vertu ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... our hands,—what could a corrupted Christianity do with it when material pleasures were more prized than they are with us, and when philanthropic institutions were unborn? If the whole power of the Gallican Church was exerted to prop up the feudal privileges of the French noblesse, and there was needed a dreadful and bloody revolution to destroy them, much more was a revolution needed at Rome to destroy the inherited powers of a still prouder and more powerful aristocracy. If the rights of women are ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... conduct of the parliament was profligate and atrocious. The bigotry, ignorance, false principles, and tyranny of these bodies were generally conspicuous.'[7] We know what the court was, we know what the noblesse was, and this is what the third great leading order in the realm was. We repeat, then, that the historic doctrine could get no fulcrum or leverage, and that only the revolutionary doctrine, which the eighteenth century had got ready for the crisis, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... intonation, and throwing himself backwards in his large easy chair, repeated: "An orphan girl," at the same time putting a half angry, half comical expression into his countenance, and perpetrating a pun in what followed: "Yes, many of your Canadian noblesse would bless themselves to have been her father. The poor fellow, it is well he is not here to have overheard you. An orphan girl: true, as you say, I have an orphan girl,—or one that passes for such; ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... outlets particularly, the greatest wretchedness to prevail, and to be very thin of inhabitants. A great part of the Faubourg St. Germain, near the Boulevards, is in a great measure deserted; but this quarter was formerly inhabited principally by the noblesse. There is scarcely a street in Paris where there are not several houses written upon, Propriete nationale a vendre, and sometimes in addition, ou a louer; and in many places a great part of the street is in the same ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... poems Aeclogues, from a Greek word meaning Goatherds' Tales, "Though indeed few goatherds have to do herein." He dedicated them to Sir Philip Sidney as "the president of noblesse and of chivalrie." ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... other favorites of fortune in the latter days of the monarchy, purchased his patent of noblesse. Every body knew that he was a parvenu; and rumor, as she is wont in such cases, had adorned his early history with so many myths and portents, that Niebuhr himself could hardly have distinguished between the fable and the truth. It was said and believed ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... aristocracies of birth, intellect, education, wealth, or whatever other accidents set men above the mass of their fellows. Of such we expect a great response to a great demand. And we have not been disappointed. The old rule of life, NOBLESSE OBLIGE, has proved that it still possesses driving force with the most of those to whom it applies. The thing which has amazed me is the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... into Germany, she is brought into contact with the old noblesse, a very different, but far less charming, atmosphere than that of the gondoliers of Venice. But here, too, the strong, simple character of our Consuelo is unconstrained, if not at home, and when her heart swells and needs ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... upon. Not long after this assumption of the aristocratic prefix to his name, it was discovered that he had insinuated himself into the very narrow and exclusive circle of the De Merodes, who were an unquestionable fragment of the old noblesse, damaged, it is true, almost irretrievably in purse, as their modest establishment on the Cote too plainly testified; but in pedigree as untainted and resplendent as in the palmiest days of the Capets. As the Chevalier de Merode and his daughter ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... martyrs, and the devoted fugitives who sang the psalms of Marot among rocks and caverns. Joined to these were numbers on whom the faith sat lightly, whose hope was in commotion and change. Of these, in great part, was the Huguenot noblesse, from Conde, who aspired to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... much dignity, though panting from his exertions, and looking so hot that I feared an apoplexy for the old man. I did not know how tough such an old heathen is, nor that his efforts were by no means at an end. Noblesse oblige and such high caste as Palo's is not ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... from a comparison of the following authorities, all of which will be found in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, where the examination was made: Memoires de Marolles, abbe de Villeloin, II. 201; L'Hermite-Souliers, Histoire Genealogique de la Noblesse de Touraine; Du Chesne, Recherches Historiques de l'Ordre du Saint-Esprit; Morin, Statuts de l'Ordre du Saint-Esprit; Marolles de Villeloin, Histoire des Anciens Comtes d'Anjou; Pere Anselme, Grands Officiers de la Couronne; Pinard, Chronologie Historique-militaire; ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... of everywhere else. There were aristocrats of the Long Island sets—a dozen sets for one small island—the Berkshire set, the Back Bay set, the Rhode Island reds, the Plymouth Rock fowl, the old Connecticut connections, the Bar Harbor oligarchy, the Tuxedonians, the Morristown and Germantown noblesse, the pride of Philadelphia, the Baltimorioles, the diplomatic cliques of Washington, the Virginia patricians, the Piedmont Hunt set, the North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and all the other State sets, the Cleveland coteries, the Chicagocracy, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the news of a political disturbance in Paris, which reached Napoleon during his retreat from Moscow, and quickened his final abandonment of the army. The occurrence in question was the daring conspiracy headed by General Mallet. This officer, one of the ancient noblesse, had been placed in confinement in 1808, in consequence of his connection with a society called the Philadelphes, which seems to have sprung up within the French army, at the time when Napoleon seized the supreme power, and which had for its immediate object his deposition—while ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... from his noblesse halle Did trend his path a somer's daye, And to ye hoyden he did call And these ffull evill words did say: "O wolde you weare a silken gown And binde your haire with ribands gay? Then ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... them the result of his large experience and careful observation. A list of the subjects treated in this little volume will sufficiently indicate its scope: (1) The Leaders Lead; (2) The Specialties; (3) Noblesse Oblige; (4) The Mind's Maximum; (5) A Theological Seminary; (6) Character; (7) Responsibilities of Young Men; (8) Study Outside School; (9) The ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... they must be decent to Grannie and the Aunties, and to Uncle Morrie and Uncle Bartie. That was the only burden she had laid on her children. It was a case of noblesse oblige; their youth constrained them. They had received so much, and they had been let off so much; not one of them had inherited the taint that made Maurice and Emmeline Fleming and Bartie Harrison creatures diseased and irresponsible. They could afford to ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... one has actual sight of his work—what it is. He has brought with him certain long-cherished designs to finish here in quiet, as he protests he has never finished before. That charming Noblesse—can it be really so distinguished to the minutest point, so naturally aristocratic? Half in masquerade, playing the drawing-room or garden comedy of life, these persons have upon them, not less than the landscape he composes, and among the accidents of which ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater |
