"Social rank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in social rank, though poor; perhaps owning a half-dozen slaves, and cultivating a small tract of cleared ground, from twenty to fifty acres. The frame-house vouches for their respectability; while two or three log structures ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... will be very polite, but as relentless as the executioner's axe, and as impassive as the law. This freezing contempt will already probably have produced a revolution in the mind of your wife. There must be no shouts, no gesticulations, no excitement. "Men of high social rank," says a young English author, "never behave like their inferiors, who cannot lose a fork without sounding the alarm ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Rubempre, whom he loves with an intense devotion, and would exploit as a power and influence in the social, literary and political world. The deep-dyed criminal seems to live a life of pleasure, fashion and social rank in the person of this protege. The abnormal, and in some degree quixotic, nature of this attachment is a purely Balzacian conception, and the contradictions involved in this character, with all the intellectual and physical endowments which pertain to ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... has become of those pleasantries which formed "life" and "delight" and "gaiety" in the time of Marguerite of Valois? The tales of Boccaccio could not now be discussed in English society, or in any modern aristocratic society even of much lower social rank than that which surrounded Marguerite of Valois. Nowadays people are afraid of uttering an incorrect word, even of hinting at the most innocent functions of the body, or of naming those parts of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... expectations, based upon a projected visit to the French court by Count Von Hohenlohe, Dean of the Cathedral of Strasbourg—a nobleman, who, having become a Protestant, was anxious to turn to the advantage of his new convictions the influence secured to him by high social rank. The correspondence of Francis's sister with the zealous German noble opens a suggestive page of history. At first, Margaret, while applauding the count's design and building great hopes upon it, advises him to defer his visit until the king's return from Spain. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... it is accustomed, particularly when so doing entails a degradation. Such is human nature that the unwillingness to give up something to which one is accustomed is a far stronger spur to action than the ambition to get something to which one is not accustomed; and a social rank once attained is not surrendered without a struggle. A tenacious maintenance of status is the motive which figures most prominently in controlling the growth of population and the increase of capital. The rich maintain the status of the family by means of invested wealth, the poor do it by education, ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... can give you, however, no nobler example of this laughter through tears by Gogol than the following closing passage from his "Memoirs of a Maniac." You remember that during his stay at St. Petersburg, Gogol fell in love with a woman far above his social rank. In this piece of only twenty pages Gogol paints the mental condition of an humble office-scribe, who, falling in hopeless love with the daughter of his chief, loses his poor mind. After various adventures ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... they soon saw she did not intend to so commit herself. For when all her guests had passed in before her, she followed resignedly on the arm of the future Duke. As the greatest stranger, and as the highest in social rank of all present, he had claim to this privilege, and she was too tactful to ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Roman, we are told, to observe certain rules of audience. Some members of the crowd which thronged his ante-chamber, were received singly, others in smaller or in larger groups.[669] It is improbable that the mode of reception varied wholly with the official or social rank of those admitted; the nature of the client's business must also have dictated the secrecy or publicity of the interview; but the system must have seemed to his baffled enemies a welcome confirmation of their real ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Washburne resigned, and a few days later was appointed Minister to France. He was succeeded in the State Department by Mr. Hamilton Fish of New York. Mr. Fish was a member of one of the old Knickerbocker families. He had inherited wealth, was of the highest social rank, and enjoyed in a marked degree the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens. He was bred to the law, and as a young man took deep interest in political affairs, earnestly attaching himself to the fortunes ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... all machines for the resuscitation of lost superiorities. The plutocracy has shouldered out the old gentry from actual social leadership—that gentry, indeed, presents a prodigious clinical picture of the insecurity of social rank in America—but there remains at least the possibility of insisting upon a dignity which plutocrats cannot boast and may not even buy. Thus the county judge's wife in Smithville or the Methodist ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... thing. The patriots who inaugurated and led to success the American Revolution had been, generally speaking, of an inferior social rank to the Tories. Washington is regarded as a striking exception. Yet his fame rested solely upon his early military record. He was never a part of the gay life at Williamsburg. The royal governor was at the head of the Court and set the social standard. The patriots, ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... so for a time the schools were discontinued. They have been resumed, however, and are to-day prosperous as of old.[42] There are also a hospital, a home for aged women, a servants' training-school and a foundling asylum under the charge of the deaconesses. They are, as a class, of higher social rank than these of Kaiserswerth, the preponderating number of whom are from the lower grade of social life. They are also better educated. This is partly a necessity, from the fact that the city is on the border-land between two great nations and if the deaconesses are to be effective ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... displayed by this guardian to form her manners and cultivate her intellect. Nay, the result was rather to implant in her a premature dislike and distrust for conventional ideals. From the standard of culture and propriety, from the temptations of social rank and wealth held up for her preference, she instinctively turned to the simple, unrestrained affection of the despised mother, and the greater freedom and expansion enjoyed in such company. In vain did disdainful lady's-maids ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... where, I am told, 'Senators' ladies' do give themselves airs. But you are quite right, Grace; women have no rank in America, beyond their general social rank, as ladies or no ladies, and we will not be the first to set an example of breaking the rule. I am afraid our blood will pass for nothing, and that we must give place to the baronet, unless, indeed, he recognizes the rights ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... officers of the parish we pass from the class of country gentry, from which the sheriffs, coroners, justices of the peace, and high-constables were drawn, to a group of lower social rank. In the towns they may have been of somewhat higher or at least more varied status, but in the rural parishes the officers were of very humble position. In the invaluable description of England written by Harrison in the latter part of the reign ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... on a brilliant career as a dramatist, he was unjustly treated by his superiors in social rank. He was the son of a notary of some repute, and was too rich to sue for patronage, but nobles were offended by the freedom of the young wit, who declared that a poet might claim equality with princes. "Who is the young man who talks so loud?" the Chevalier ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Office. In George Roden, as a man and a companion, there was no special fault to be found. There may be those who think that a Marquis's heir should look for his most intimate friend in a somewhat higher scale of social rank, and that he would more probably serve the purposes of his future life by associating with his equals;—that like to like in friendship is advantageous. The Marquis, his father, certainly thought so in spite of his Radicalism. But he ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... The Dorian states regarded the lyre and the song as powerful instruments upon the education, the manners, and the national character of their citizens. With them these arts were watched and regulated by the law, and the poet acquired something of the social rank, and aimed at much of the moral design, of a statesman and a legislator: while, in the Ionian states, the wonderful stir and agitation, the changes and experiments in government, the rapid growth of luxury, commerce, and civilization, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inches in height; and I am sure that nobody ever saw them in line without noticing the contrast between these magnificent men and the comparatively puny officers who command them. These officers are from the highest social rank in England, the governing classes; and if it were the whole object of this military organization to give a visible proof of the utter absurdity of the "Saturday Review's" theory, it could not be better done. There is ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... lavished upon the sex he alternately serves and spurns. In further addition, she had the vanity of her class—the comfortable class that feels superior to the mass of mankind in fortune, in intellect, in taste, in everything desirable. Heaped upon all these vanities was her vanity of high social rank—and atop the whole her vanity of great wealth. None but the sweetest and simplest of human beings can stand up and remain human under such a weight as this. If we are at all fair in our judgments of our fellow men, we marvel ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... admitted to himself that he had never been asked so embarrassing a question in all his life. Before him was his wife's friend, a lady of the highest social rank, and she was so unmistakably a lady that he could treat her with only the utmost deference. He saw with alarm himself the mother's nervous and trembling apprehension, for there was scarcely anything under heaven that he would not rather face ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... only was high political and social rank reached by individual "merchant princes," such as the wealthy William de la Pole, a descendant of whom is said (though on unsatisfactory evidence) to have been Chaucer's grand-daughter, but the government of the country came to be very perceptibly influenced by the class from which they sprang. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... soon, a sum of over L80,000. He was happy in his children. He was universally loved, honoured, courted. "Troops of friends," though, alas! death had made havoc among the oldest, were still his. Never had man exhibited less inclination to pay fawning court to greatness and social rank. Yet when the Queen expressed a desire to see him, as she did in March, 1870, he felt not only pride, but a gentleman's pleasure in acceding to her wish, and came away charmed from a long chatting interview. But, while prosperity was smiling thus, the shadows of his day of life were lengthening, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... to the water-fronts radiate a number of still more narrow and squalid lanes, harbouring a population which is held inferior to that of the streets in social rank without yet being willing to have itself classed with the manual toilers of the suburbs. Halfway down the slope of such a lane, and almost within the shadow of the palace, stood the house where Keith first arrived at some sort of consciousness of himself ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... in the open countenance something that kept her lingering a moment longer. "This is a democratic place," she said in a more sympathetic tone, "every girl finds her own level sooner or later. The basis is not money or social rank of the families at home. It is not brains or clothes or stuff like that. It is simply that the same kind of girls drift together. They're congenial. It seems to be a law. A general law, you understand. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... a process of natural selection. You will see, as you get better acquainted with the workings of our institutions, that there are no arbitrary distinctions here but the fitness of the work for the man and the man for the work determines the social rank that ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... married to a lady of rank from Brussels, Anne van Hamme by name; and their daughter married in time Philip II.'s grand falconer, who was doubtless a personage of no small social rank. He was well off in worldly things; somewhat fond, it is said, of good living and of luxury; inclined, it may be, to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," and to sink more and more into the mere worldling, unless some shock awoke him ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... curiosity. As before hinted, Guest's appearance in his overalls and woolen shirt was somewhat incongruous, and, for some inexplicable reason, the same face and figure which did not look inconsistent in rags and extreme poverty now at once suggested a higher social rank both of intellect and refinement than his workman's dress indicated. This, added to his surliness of manner and expression, strengthened a growing suspicion in the mind of the party that he was a fugitive from justice—a forger, a ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... was no longer the same; if not in degree, their social prosperity had altered in quality; for instead of being a purely pastoral and vagrant people, they were now in circumstances which obliged them to become essentially dependent upon agriculture; and thus far raised in social rank, that by the natural course of their habits and the necessities of life they were effectually reclaimed from roving, and from the savage customs connected with so unsettled a life. They gained also in political privileges, chiefly through the immunity ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... exemption of the clergy from taxation, and of the wealth of the Church, we have already spoken, as well as of the high social rank of its prelates—a rank more in keeping with that of wealthy worldly noblemen than with that of devout "servants of the Lord." But we have yet to mention the influence of the Church ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... entirely on his property is of a very different character, and thoroughly unlike an old English gentleman of the same social rank. Supremely indolent and unintellectual, he thinks of nothing but how he can most easily kill time. When he awakes in the morning, his attendant slave brings him his pipe, and he smokes till his first meal ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... subsequent visit to Paris—it seems to me as if this railway were the one typical achievement of the age in which we live, as if it brought together into one plot all the ends of the world and all the degrees of social rank, and offered to some great writer the busiest, the most extended, and the most varied subject for an enduring literary work. If it be romance, if it be contrast, if it be heroism that we require, what was ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... if I may thus style actors of such exalted social rank, consisted principally of Eugene, Jerome, Lauriston, de Bourrienne, Isabey, de Leroy, Didelot, Mademoiselle Hortense, Madame Caroline Murat, and the two Mademoiselles Auguie, one of whom afterwards married ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the political temper and action of the lawyers were deemed matters of high importance, their political indiscretions and misdemeanors were promptly and sometimes ferociously punished. An idle joke over a pot of wine sometimes cost a witty barrister his social rank and his ears. To promote a wholesome fear of authority in the colleges, government every now and then flogged a student at the cart's tail in Holborn, or pilloried a sad apprentice of the law in Chancery Lane, or ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... wrong, this is my temper. But he who should argue from it that I am intolerant of all persons belonging to a lower social rank than my own would go far astray. Nothing is more rooted in my mind than the vast distinction between the individual and the class. Take a man by himself, and there is generally some reason to be found in him, some disposition for good; mass him with his fellows in the ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... queen is the head of society. If she were not so, the prime minister would be the first person in the country. As it is the House of Commons attracts people who go there merely for social purposes; if the highest social rank was to be scrambled for in the House of Commons, the number of social adventurers there would be even more numerous. It has been objected of late that English royalty is not splendid enough. It is compared with the French court, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... seemed to her princely, regal even, in his strong cultivated manhood, his lofty calling and ambition, and his high social rank. As for herself, it now appeared that her beauty, whose spell she had thought no man could resist, had lured him to her side only long enough to discover what she was and who she was, and then he had turned away ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe |
