"Noblesse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after that, but the Vicomte, who was listening, began at once to say flattering things across the table. They all make compliments upon my French, and are very gay and kind, but I wish they did not eat so badly. The Comte and the Marquise, who are cousins, and of the very oldest noblesse, are the worst—one daren't look sometimes. The Comtesse is a little better, but then her family is only Empire, and Jean and Heloise ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... slaveholders to be aristocrats, and thus like to acquire an aristocratic perfume. But, aristocratically speaking, most of this promiscuous young Europa are parvenus, and the few titled among them have heraldically no noble blood in their veins. No wonder that here they mistake monstrosities for real noblesse. Enthusiastic is young ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... 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
... the proudest heroic, and purest legislative, days of Greece, the symbol had borne for all men skilled in her traditions: to the schools of craftsmen the sign meant further their craft's noblesse, and pure descent from the divinely-terrestrial skill of Daedalus, the labyrinth-builder, and the first sculptor of imagery pathetic[48] with human ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... 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 oblige,"—he ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... generally confined to the higher classes or noblesse, that is to say, such as kept their own cows, and drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at 3 o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... proposition in their midst. 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 ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... whose real name we never knew, but whose 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 possible, rather broader in the shoulders. He was the only ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... these novi homini treated with the distance and disdain they would formerly have experienced from the haughty aristocracy of France. The pride of the old noblesse had been stifled by the stronger instinct of avarice. They rather sought the intimacy and confidence of these lucky upstarts; and it has been observed that a nobleman would gladly take his seat at the table of the fortunate lackey of yesterday, in hopes of learning ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... terrace would never have suspected. Few of the tenements could claim to be anything better than mere farm-houses. Yet every second building you came upon was a chateau—yes, a veritable chateau, the actual abode of some seigneur of the old noblesse of France, whose name might be like enough to call up the memory of some illustrious deed done in the old chivalric days of France. The country literally swarmed with chateaux and with nobles. Do you see yon rickety, tumble-down building, scarce big enough for a good-sized family? That ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... Romans of every degree, for they had achieved much glory for the Roman name. In the words of one who has interpreted the sentiment of those times with rare felicity, Rome could bear the pride of him of whom herself was proud. The old French noblesse, again, were not devoid of redeeming qualities. Their galling yoke would not have been borne from reign to reign, and through century after century, even by such seeming reconcilables as constituted the bulk of the French populace during the ante-Revolutionary period, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... of the press by the censure; and of the 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 ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of these artificers to the State was that of a caste entirely separate from the noblesse; [1] paid for their daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the best article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to overrate the difference between such a social condition, and that of the artists of to-day, struggling to occupy ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... grand, historic. Women have often appeared in history—noble, brilliant, heroic women; but woman collectively, impersonally, never until now. To-day, for the first time, she asks recognition in the commonwealth—not in virtue of hereditary noblesse—not for any excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the simple ground of her presence in the race, with the same rights, interests, responsibilities as man. There was nothing in this gathering at the Capitol to touch the imagination with illusion, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... first election of Aix, when rejected with contempt by the noblesse, he cast himself into the arms of the people, certain of making the balance incline to the side on which he should cast the weight of his daring and his genius. Marseilles contended with Aix for the great ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... States-General will meet, if not in January, at least in May. But how to form it? On the model of the last States-General in 1614, says the Parlement, which means that the Tiers Etat will be of no account, if the noblesse and the clergy agree. Wherewith terminates the popularity of the Parlement. As for the "thinkers," it is a sheer snowing of pamphlets. And Abbe Sieyes has come to Paris to ask three questions, and answer them: What is the Third ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... taken up and borne thence, and amongst them was Bertrand des Amis, himself—like all who lived by the sword—an ardent upholder of the noblesse, trampled to death under hooves of foreign horsemen launched by the noblesse and led by ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... 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, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... was announced. Palo turned round and descended from his pedestal with 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 attained ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... is no affair of mine. I recognize in you a different calibre from that of these rich young idlers in Howard's class. I am going to take you into my confidence, for you understand the need for secrecy, and will surely help in every way—noblesse oblige. This man Cronin, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Below him was a Russian 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, when, as the days passed, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... 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 a thousand dollars a year. The markets are capitally supplied, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... 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 ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... independence, which in all probability they would not have done had they not been 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 ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... private carriage of the deceased was followed by many other carriages filled with the noblesse of France, each drawn by six horses. The state equipages of the Prince of Wales and of the Dukes of Sussex and York, with postilions in state livery, closed the procession. With such mournful pageants were the mortal remains ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... sur le champ de bataille. Ils etaient pour la 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 ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... infatuation; her system but the perpetual abandonment of herself to every partisan who promised her the king's safety. The Comte D'Artois, a youthful prince, chivalrous in etiquette, had much influence with her. He relied greatly on the noblesse; made frequent references to his sword. He laughed at the crises: he disdained this war of words, caballed against ministers, and treated passing events with levity. The queen, intoxicated with the adulation of those around ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine |
