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Aristocracy   Listen
noun
Aristocracy  n.  (pl. aristocracies)  
1.
Government by the best citizens.
2.
A ruling body composed of the best citizens. (Obs.) "In the Senate Right not our quest in this, I will protest them To all the world, no aristocracy."
3.
A form a government, in which the supreme power is vested in the principal persons of a state, or in a privileged order; an oligarchy. "The aristocracy of Venice hath admitted so many abuses, trough the degeneracy of the nobles, that the period of its duration seems approach."
4.
The nobles or chief persons in a state; a privileged class or patrician order; (in a popular use) those who are regarded as superior to the rest of the community, as in rank, fortune, or intellect.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Aristocracy" Quotes from Famous Books



... it only in the Austrian army that he trusted; Metternich was persuaded that neither in Lombardy nor in Venetia was there any fear of a really popular and, therefore, formidable movement. He believed that Austria's only enemy was the aristocracy. He even threw out hints that if the Austrian Government condescended to do so, it could raise a social or peasants' war of the country people against their masters. This is the policy which has been elaborately followed by the Russians in Poland. The Austrians pointed ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... horizontal. The frame is robust and muscular, but not so well proportioned and regular as in the former type. These two types with many intervening links are found everywhere. The characteristics are perhaps more marked among the women than the men. Especially among the aristocracy the women have been less affected by weather and exposure and physical exertion than the men. In the regions about Kyoto and in the western portions of the Main island the prevalence of what may be called the aristocratic type is most marked. ...
— Japan • David Murray

... I want to avoid a painful scene, because he is so sure of himself, and never dreams of a refusal. It is such a pity, too, for the butler is my ideal of what a member of the aristocracy should be. His dignity is positively awe-inspiring; while Lord Freddie is such a simple, good-natured, everyday young fellow, that if I imported him to the States I am sure no one would believe he was a real lord. With the butler ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... thought to gain popular sympathy by Michelangelo's appointment, they made the mistake of alienating the aristocracy. It was the weakness of Florence at this momentous crisis in her fate, to be divided into parties, political, religious, social; whose internal jealousies deprived her of the strength which comes alone from unity. When ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... to notice me and asked me a few questions concerning my pedigree. I told him that my ancestors came over in the Mayflower, for was not Carver a name of which to be proud? He said that he belonged to the English aristocracy, but soon discovered that my education was better than his, for he had learned his letters only from playing around on the nursery floor and seeing them on blocks. His lessons of life had been acquired from a Mother ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe

... until that great crisis in the history of the French aristocracy, the Revolution of 1789, the family of La Rochefoucauld have been, "if not first, in the very first line" of that most illustrious body. One Seigneur served under Philip Augustus against Richard Coeur de Lion, and was made prisoner at the battle of Gisors. The eighth Seigneur ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

... Corners which consists of a single shady square. Two sides of the square are taken up with shops, the other two with the school, a couple of churches, and a dozen or so of dwellings. This composes as much of the town as is visible, the aristocracy being scattered over the outlying plantations, and regarding the "Corners" merely as a source of mail and drinks. Three miles farther down the pike lies Kennisburg, the county seat, which answers the varied ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... to deny or to conceal the truth in respect to that franchise [the forty-shilling franchise]. It was, until a late period, the instrument through which the landed aristocracy—the resident and the absentee proprietor, maintained their local influence—through which property had its weight, its legitimate weight, in the national representation. The landlord has been disarmed by the priest.... that weapon ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... Boys of twenty-one form another portion, fully imbued with a belief in woman's inferiority which only experience can eradicate. Men of the so-called working classes vote against it because they fear to add to the power of the so-called aristocracy. The latter oppose it because they think the suffrage already has been too widely extended and ought to be curtailed instead of expanded. The old fogies cast a negative ballot because they believe woman ought to be kept in her "sphere," ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... refuse to follow the lead of their inferiors. Exactly because the majority is still so hopelessly wasteful and mischievous, does it behove the minority not merely to work to some profit, but to play without damage. To do this should become the mark of Nature's aristocracy, a sign of liberality of spiritual birth and breeding, a ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... stamped upon the facades of the stone-built cities of Mexico—religion and aristocracy have left their mark. They are cities of churches and convents, and of the abodes of the authoritative and the wealthy. They are far from being "republican" in aspect—that is, if the term is meant to convey the idea of democracy. The Governor's palace, the military cuartel, the ecclesiastical ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... Brains, Birth and Boodle, are three aristocracies. The first aristocracy has no less authority than that of the Almighty. The aristocracies of birth and boodle are sham counterfeits gotten up by man. They do not mean anything when put into the crucible ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... Raths, and the Prussian RITTERSCHAFT generally (Knightage, Land-Aristocracy), which had its STANDE (States: or meetings of Parliament after a sort), were all along of a mutinous, contumacious humor. The idea had got into their minds, That they were by birth what the ancient Ritters by election had been; entitled, fit or not fit, to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... full, true and particular account of a surprising run with the royal stag-hounds; and Archer, who had grown sentimental, with tears in his eyes, entered into a minute detail of certain passages in a romantic attachment he had conceived for a youthful female branch of the aristocracy, whom he designated as Lady Barbara B.; and how these three gentlemen continued their various recitals all at one and the same time, edifying the company by some such composite style of ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... giants—indefatigable in the pursuit of open-air amusements: now in their sailing-boats, now in their motor-cars, or on horse-back, or driving their four-in-hands. And finally, being Italians, they are Anglophile giants;—like so many of the Italian aristocracy, they are more English than the English. They are rigorously English in their dress, for instance; they have all their clothes from London, and these invariably of the latest mode. They give English names to their sailing-boats—the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... considered honour and generosity as belonging indefeasibly, if not exclusively, to the privileged orders. His notions of virtue were certainly aristocratic in the extreme, but his ambition was to entertain such only as would best support and dignify an aristocracy. His pride was magnanimous, not insolent; and his social prejudices were such as, in some degree, to supply the place of the power and habit of reasoning, in which he was totally deficient. One principle of philosophy he practically possessed ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... No wonder that the Pincian Hill is the favourite promenade of Rome, and that on week-days and Sunday afternoons you see multitudes of people showing every phase of Roman life, and hundreds of carriages containing the flower of the Roman aristocracy, with beautiful horses, and footmen in rich liveries, crowding the piazza below, ascending the winding road, and driving or walking round between the palms and the pines, over the garden-paths, to the sound of band music. And thus they continue to amuse themselves till the sun has set, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... mind remains in ways of speech and thought and "come-all-ye"s and poetical saying; nor is it only among the poor that the old thought has been for strength or weakness. Surely these old stories, whether of Finn or Cuchulain, helped to sing the old Irish and the old Norman-Irish aristocracy to their end. They heard their hereditary poets and story-tellers, and they took to horse and died fighting against Elizabeth or against Cromwell; and when an English-speaking aristocracy had their place, it listened to no poetry indeed, ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... for the audience consisted of a select circle of pupils, friends, and partisans who, as Chopin told Lenz, took the tickets in advance and divided them among themselves. As most of the pupils belonged to the aristocracy, it followed as a matter of course that the concert was emphatically what Liszt calls it, "un concert de fashion." The three chief musical papers of Paris: the "Gazette Musicale," the "France Musicale," and the "Menestrel" were unanimous in their high, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... must dismiss from your minds the too common notion that there is now, in England, a governing Norman aristocracy, or that there has been one, at least since the year 1215, when Magna Charta was won from the Norman John by Normans and by English alike. For the first victors at Hastings, like the first conquistadores in America, perished, as the monk chronicles point out, rapidly by their own crimes; ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... theme of daily meditation and thought-distracting speculation. Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence, he has no reason to give himself airs about it. The occasion of Tiedge's Urania led me to observe that piety, like nobility, has its aristocracy. I met stupid women, who plumed themselves on believing, with Tiedge, in immortality, and I was forced to bear much dark examination on this point. They were vexed by my saying I should be well pleased if, after the close of this life, we were blessed with another, only I hoped I should hereafter ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... country. It had been the chosen land of the Covenanters, the foes of privilege and the defenders of liberal principles in government. Its leading families, the Kennedys, the Gordons, and {5} the Douglases, formed a broad-minded aristocracy. In such surroundings, as one of the 'lads of the Dee,' Thomas Douglas inevitably developed a type of mind more or less radical. His political opinions, however, were guided by a cultivated intellect. His father, a patron of letters, ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood

... He was a son of old Enos Dwight and Melissy Pettigrew; and I can remember the time, and not so very long ago, either, when the Adamses wouldn't have had anything to do with such folks," remarked Miss Bean, who Avas not only a firm believer in the aristocracy of the old town, but regarded it as her right to utter all the disagreeable truths that came into ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... France had but one neck, that with a grasp of my own hand, I might at once choke out their pernicious breath," and the republican laid upon the table his huge hand, and tightly clenched his fingers as though he held between them the imaginary throat of the aristocracy of France; "but," continued he, "much as I hate a gentleman, ten times more strongly do I hate, despise, and abhor the subservient crew of spiritless slaves who uphold the power of the masters, who ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... in black coats, among whom the eye remarked the elegant, delicate, and correctly drawn profile of nobles, the ruddy beards and grave faces of Englishmen, and the more gracious faces of the French aristocracy. All the orders of Europe glittered on the breasts or hung from the necks of ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... Schuyler was the most notable private event of the Revolution. The immense social and political consequence of the Schuylers, and the romantic fame of the young aide, of whom the greatest things possible were expected, brought the aristocracy of New York and the Jersies to Albany despite the inclement winter weather. The large house of the Schuylers gave a prolonged hospitality to the women, and the men lodged in the patriarchal little town. But although Hamilton was glad to see ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... whether with his mates or alone, of a spirit indomitably free. And Gogol was a Cossak. Southern Russia had not as yet produced a single great voice, because Southern Russia, New Russia, had as yet no aristocracy. Gogol is thus the only great Russian writer who sprang not from an autocracy whitewashed with Western culture, but from the genuine Russian people. It is this which makes Gogol the most ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... A. Sorel, "despised his government, detested his clergy, hated the nobility, and revolted against the laws, the Englishman was proud of his religion, his constitution, his aristocracy, his House of Lords. These were like so many towers of the formidable Bastille in which he entrenched himself, under the British standard, to judge Europe and cover her with contempt. He admitted that the command was disputed inside the fort, but no ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... and wicked of wars. They called it a second Revolutionary War, the scoundrels! When my father and your father, Tom Hulzman,' said he, addressing one of his hearers, 'fought in the Revolution, they fought against a tyrannical monarchy that was founded upon a landed aristocracy—that is, rich big feeling people, that owned very big farms. The Government stands in this war, if any thing, better than our fathers stood. We fight against what is far worse than a landed aristocracy, meaner in the sight of God and more hated by honest men, this accursed slave aristocracy, ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... Industrial Revolution. Resulting in exportation, markets, and laissez-faire doctrines. b. The bourgeoisie (employers) ... The Third Estate. c. The proletariat ... Unorganized labor elements. C. The Revolutionary Period, 1789-1800. 1. Triumph of bourgeoisie over feudal aristocracy in France, 1789-1791. Limited monarchy. Mirabeau. 2. Increasing influence and rise to control of France of the Parisian proletariat. The Republic ... The Terror ... Robespierre. 3. Radiation of revolutionary ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... tall girl with masses and folds of brown hair, who came from America to paint miniatures of the British aristocracy. Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because she was so brave and fearless, and so determined to be independent of every one, even of the lodger—especially of the lodger, who it appeared had known ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... persuasions—for even in that remote region sectarianism had done much toward banishing religion—assembled promiscuously together and without show of discord, excepting that here and there a high stickler for church aristocracy, in a better coat than his neighbor, thrust him aside; or, in another and not less offensive form of pride, in the externals of humility and rotten with innate malignity, groaned audibly through his clenched teeth; and with shut eyes and crossed hands, as in prayer, sought ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... have produced the most palatial residences ever inhabited by prelates was but a natural outcome of the conditions then existing. The society of Rome was a hierarchical aristocracy made up of the younger sons of every powerful and ambitious family of Italy, and the red hat was so greatly desired not for the honour or emoluments of the cardinalcy per se but because it was a step to ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... his passion, and, if accused of it, denies the accusation. After reading all his writings, no one could for a moment claim that Thackeray was the biographer of heroes. He is a biographer of meanness, and times, and sham aristocracy and folks, and can, when he cares to do so, portray heroism lofty as tallest mountains. With Hugo all is different. He will do nothing else than dream and depict ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... nasty drunken chap down Wapping way who had seen better days; he had views on dozens of things and they were often worth listening to, and one of his fads was to be for ever preaching that the whole social position of an aristocracy resided in a veil of illusion, and that hands laid too violently on this veil would tear it. It was only by a sort of hypnotism, he said, that we regarded Lords as separate from ourselves. It was a dream, and a rough movement would wake one out of it. Snobbishness ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... and taxing of luxuries soon aroused the opposition of the aristocracy, and the weak but good-hearted King asked his minister to resign. Both wife and daughter felt the blow keenly, for both idolized him, so much so that the mother feared lest she be supplanted by her daughter. Madame de Stael says of her father, "From the moment of their marriage to her death, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... worthy couple had lived through their long union very happily. While still young the wife had been able to make important friends among the aristocracy, partly by virtue of her family descent, and partly by her own exertions; while, in after life, thanks to their wealth and to the position of her husband in the service, she took her place among the ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... wholesome point, government, unwilling to draw the sword, is not forced to do it. The contest here is exactly what it was in Holland: a contest between the monarchical and aristocratical parts of the government for a monopoly of despotism over the people. The aristocracy in Holland, seeing that their common prey was likely to escape out of their clutches, chose rather to retain its former portion, and therefore coalesced with the single head. The people remained victims. Here, I think, it will take a happier turn. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... forever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race where the Saxon ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... he despised obvious Christians and ciphers with the chrysanthemums of aristocracy in their button-holes. He considered himself above both of these classes. He was afraid of neither the devil nor the ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane

... rider. Lossing can ride also, even a British cavalry nag. In fine, I studied you from first to last, supposing you to be Rae, a member of the English aristocracy.' ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... goes off at a tangent, and picks out several other distinguished-looking personages, numbering them as "first to right," "second to left," and so forth, as if in a collection of wax-works, giving to each one of them a name and a history. His acquaintance with the private life of the aristocracy and the plutocracy is so extensive that I can only wonder at his knowledge, his or marvel at wondrous powers ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various

... the Negro element, whilst amongst the rising generation many fair-haired children can claim paternity amongst the numerous German and English workmen that have been employed at the mines. The store-keepers form the aristocracy of the village. They are indolent; lounging about, or lying smoking in their hammocks the greater part of the day, but generally civil and polite. They are particular in their dress, and may often be seen in faultless European costume, silk umbrella in hand, in twos or threes, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... a class," said Burke, "is neither reasonable nor right." But certain it is that a vast number of fairly intelligent people in England and elsewhere regard the life of the "aristocracy" as very ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... than I greatly feared that I had made matters worse; for here was I, a guest in the house, actually offering to purchase clothing—ready-made or to to order—from my host, who, for all I knew, might be one of the aristocracy of the country. My ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... leave the humbler classes and occupations of society, and turn our attention to those which represent the refinement, the cultivation, and the power, of the two respective periods, we shall find that almost all analogy fails. There was an aristocracy then as now, ruling over the widely extended communities of peaceful agriculturalists and herdsmen, but the members of it were entirely different in their character, their tastes, their ideas, and their occupations from the classes which exercise the ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... to suffer yet more, his correspondence shows. But his iron will prevented that suffering from disturbing the equanimity of his mind. The Council of Regency, in its concern to court popularity with the aristocracy of Portugal, might balk his measures by its deliberate supineness; echoes might reach him of the voices at St. Stephen's that loudly dubbed his dispositions rash, presumptuous and silly; catch-halfpenny journalists at home and men of the stamp of Lord Grey might exploit their ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... received no visit in return. Knowing how punctilious they were in all matters of etiquette, she felt very much surprised at the omission, until the Marquise de Coutelier haughtily told her the reason of this neglect. Aware that her husband's rank and wealth made her the queen of the Normandy aristocracy, the marquise ruled in queen-like fashion, showing herself gracious or severe as occasions demanded. She never hesitated to speak as she thought, and reproved, or congratulated, or corrected whenever she thought fit. When Jeanne called on her she addressed a few icy ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... his companions were on him. He was a middle-sized, red-faced man, with an aquiline nose, a light-blue animated eye, and a mouth, which denoted more of the habits and care of refinement than either his dress or his ordinary careless mien. A great deal is said about the aristocracy of the ears, and the hands, and the feet; but of all the features, or other appliances of the human frame, the mouth and the nose have the greatest influence in producing an impression of gentility. This was peculiarly the case with the stranger, whose beak, like that ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... maternal purgatory, she rose at once into the conjugal paradise prepared for her by Felix, rue du Rocher, in a house where all things were redolent of aristocracy, but where the varnish of society did not impede the ease and "laisser-aller" which young and loving hearts desire so much. From the start, Marie-Angelique tasted all the sweets of material life to the very utmost. For ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... friends and the old habits were dropped. JOHNNY DABCHICK was sent to Eton with an immoderate allowance of pocket-money, and was promptly christened "PEKOE" by his schoolfellows. Mrs. DABCHICK rides in a huge landau with blue wheels, and leaves cards on the fringes of the aristocracy. DABCHICK himself aspires to Parliament, and never keeps the same circle of friends for more than about six months. He knows one shady Viscount to whom rumour asserts that he has lent immense sums of Guatemalan money, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various

... too, almost at the top of the same page, after the words 'that there ever was, or can be, an aristocracy of poets,' add and insert these words—'I do not mean that they should write in the style of the song by a person of quality, or parle euphuism; but there is a nobility of thought and expression to be found no less in Shakspeare, Pope, and Burns, than in Dante, Alfieri,' &c. &c. and so on. Or, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... Richelieu introduced feudalism into Canada about the year 1527. He had two objects in view: (a) to create a Canadian aristocracy, (b) to establish an easy system of dividing land among settlers. This system of holding land came to be known as Seigniorial Tenure. The seignior received vast tracts of land from the King, became his vassal, and in turn made grants to the censitaires, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... can have no adequate conception of the conservatism that still prevails in certain quarters. I refer to the really old families among the landed aristocracy. Some of them have not changed essentially, in their attitude towards the world in general, since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. They make of family a fetish. They are ready to sacrifice everything ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... privileged order of men in the community, more adverse to the rights of all, and more pernicious to the interests of the whole, than any order of nobility ever known. To call government thus constituted a democracy, is to insult the understanding of mankind. To call it an aristocracy, is to do injustice to that form of government. Aristocracy is the government of the best. Its standard qualification for accession to power is merit, ascertained by popular election recurring at short intervals of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... which at home would not have been tolerated. But it came only once a year, and they could afford it. Quite established as an intimate, was a tall young gentleman, with delicate moustache, who seemed to be on terms of friendly familiarity with half the aristocracy of the nation. Mrs Combermere whispered to Bab, that Mr Newton was a most 'patrician person,' of the 'highest connections;' they had met with him on the sands, where he had been of signal use in assisting Mrs Combermere over the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... highway, it had run through a country of comfortable farm-houses and substantial old-fashioned mansions standing in spacious grounds of woodland and meadow. These latter occupied the heights along the great river, like a lofty breastwork of aristocracy, guarding the humbler tillers of the soil in the more sheltered plains and hollows behind them. The extreme north of my playground had been, within my father's easy remembering, a woodland wild enough to shelter deer; and even in my boyhood there remained patches of forest ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... proposals for improving the management of the manorial courts; he wished to see them altered so as to give something of the advantages of the English system; he regrets the "want of corporate spirit and public feeling in our corn-growing aristocracy"; "it is unfortunately difficult among most of the gentlemen to awake any other idea under the words 'patrimonial power' but the calculation whether the fee will cover the expenses." We can easily understand that the man who wrote this would be called a ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... his rue—whether for lady fair or for towering prospects stricken down—with a tinge of wan melancholy not unbecoming to a gentle aquilinity of profile, softened by the grace of adolescence. His instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste would have availed him little with his new associates had he been a whit less manly. But as he shirked no part of the universal hardship, they left him his reticence. He even came to enjoy a sort of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... end of the table?" said Joanna to the scared little clergyman, who would almost have preferred to sit under it rather than receive the honour which Miss Godden's respect for his cloth dictated. "Mr. Huxtable, will you sit by me?" Having thus settled her aristocracy she turned to her equals and allotted places to Vine of Birdskitchen, Furnese of Misleham, Southland of Yokes Court, and their wives. "Arthur Alce, you take my left," and a tall young man with red hair, red whiskers, and a face covered with freckles ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... (placing his chair next to Slangy Daughter's, and leaning his elbow on her.) "There is nothing like trade. We tradesmen alone are great. We despise the whole lot of clean and idle aristocrats. I keep a Gin Palace in Liverpool. Does your bloated aristocracy do half ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various

... obligation and the vindication of an elder doom;—it is for us to assert and to secure the claim of every son of Adam to the common inheritance ratified by the sentence, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread." We are to establish no aristocracy of race or complexion, no caste which Nature and Revelation alike refuse to recognize, but the indefeasible right of man to the soil which he subdues, and the muscles with which he subdues it. If this be a sectional creed, it is a sectionality which at least includes three hundred and fifty-nine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... on the lawn, and altogether was much the handsomest residence in the village. Three years before, the house, or, at all events, the principal rooms, had been newly furnished from the city. No wonder the squire and all the family held up their heads, and regarded themselves as belonging to the aristocracy. ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger

... conditions of that time: they are poems for the small circle of scholars among the gentry and for cultured patrons, spiced with quotations and allusions, elaborate in metre and construction, masterpieces of aesthetic sensitivity—but unintelligible except to highly educated members of the aristocracy. The works were of the most artificial type, far removed from ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... the first place, aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice, due to the unnatural and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... clergyman, born about 1620, who came to Hartford, where his son Richard, born 1647, the grandfather of Jonathan, was an eminently prosperous merchant. Richard was an only son. The father of Jonathan, Timothy Edwards, was an only son in a family of seven. Aristocracy was at its height in the household of the merchants of Hartford in the ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship

... there was an aristocracy of birth based originally on the possession of land. But in Babylonia it tended at an early period to be absorbed by the mercantile and priestly classes, and in later days it is difficult to find traces even of its existence. The nobles of the age of Nebuchadnezzar were either wealthy ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... of this former squire of Bracken-end in Woodhall, we have an individual belonging to a family of knightly rank, his friends being members of some of our oldest county aristocracy, and his transactions connected with such Lords paramount as the Baron Willoughby of Knaith and Lord Clinton of Tattershall. I may add that the family is now represented by Lord Sherard of Leitrim, in the Peerage of Ireland, who is connected by marriage with the Reeves of Leadenham, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... kingdom as has never before been attempted to be brought together. It relates to the untitled families of rank, as the "Peerage and Baronetage" does to the titled, and forms, in fact, a peerage of the untitled aristocracy. It embraces the whole of the landed interest, and is indispensable to the library of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... the dragon on which it rested, to the beak of the hand-carved eagle, spreading his wings over the shield beneath him, carved in the solid mahogany and surrounded by thirteen stars, all was elegance and aristocracy. Even the bold staring eyes of the eagle seemed proud of the age of the side-board, for had it not been built when the stars numbered but thirteen? And was not the eagle ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... aristocracy, a love of distinction, among the lowest dregs of society, as there is also a love of plush and other insignificant tawdry among our more wealthy republicans. Few would have thought of one inebriate affecting superiority over another, (the vote-cribber was an inebriate, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... gone to America, where he had won a prize for a new and wonderful application of steam. His death is said to have occurred as the result of mental fatigue. In this Borrow saw cause for grave complaint against the wretched English Aristocracy that forced talent out of the country by denying it employment or honour, which were all for their "connections and ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... beyond the common experience of towns reaching the same magnitude. How was this accounted for? The word tradesman is, more than even the term middle class, liable to great ambiguity of meaning; for it includes a range so large as to take in some who tread on the heels even of the highest aristocracy, and some at the other end, who rank not at all higher than day-labourers or handicraftsmen. Now, those who ranked with gentlemen, took the ordinary course of gentlemen in righting themselves under personal insults; ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... discovered that in Virginia a town was rather a meeting place for the landed aristocracy than a commercial center. The arrival of the British troops and of Americans from other colonies brought much life into the little capital. The people began to pour in from the country houses, and the single street was thronged with the best horses and the best ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... which he professes to be a master. Every one is a layman, so far as he is guided by the counsel and experience of another, within the sphere of religion, where he is comparatively a stranger. There is not here the tyrannic aristocracy, which you describe with such hatred; but this society is a priestly people, a perfect republic, where every one is alternately ruler and citizen, where every one follows the same power in another which he feels also in himself, and with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... privileges are granted to the major powers in the conduct of the organization. The rights and obligations of one member of the League are no more and no less than those of every other member. It is based on international democracy and denies international aristocracy. ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... according to general expectation, by a millennium of happiness and virtue: some courtiers lost their places, some patriots lost their characters, Lord Orford's offences vanished with his power; and after a short vibration, the Pelham government was fixed on the old basis of the Whig aristocracy. In the year 1745, the throne and the constitution were attacked by a rebellion, which does not reflect much honour on the national spirit; since the English friends of the Pretender wanted courage to join his standard, and his enemies ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... of the bubble Excessive taxation Worthlessness of the nobility Their effeminacy and hypocrisy Character of the King Corruption of his court The Jesuits Death of the King The reign of court mistresses Madame de Pompadour Extravagance of the aristocracy Improvements of Paris Fall of the Jesuits The Philosophers and their writings,—Voltaire, Rousseau ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... the aristocracy of Geneva; neither his liberality nor his wit secured him the good-will of the patriots placed out of the sphere of his influence; they only saw him a sham philosopher, without principles and solidity; a courtier, the slave of rank and fashion; the corrupter of their country, of which he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... daughter to public notice, though the fact was that pretty nearly every one who was going to this ball had seen the two young ladies—though not their ball dresses—before. But, aping the manners of the aristocracy as far as she knew them, she intended to 'bring out' Molly and Cynthia on this occasion, which she regarded in something of the light of a presentation at Court. 'They are not out yet,' was her favourite excuse when either of ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... of the Latin countries, beginning with France and Portugal, chiefly against Authority, and most of all against Monarchy (since Monarchy is the most vivid and the most concrete embodiment of authority); and in Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon countries against Capital and Aristocracy. It was in these years that Socialism came most near to dominating the civilized world; and, indeed, you will remember that for long after that date it did dominate civilization ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... but in the various changes which soon afterwards perplexed the political world, its first object was almost forgotten, and its most important character was the front Of Opposition which it now maintained against that powerful aristocracy which had long ruled the country with absolute dominion. It now declared against the Coalition administration." Life of Wilberforce, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... gradually casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are no less contagious than vices. "There needs but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion," says Emerson. No social class or caste can resist the ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... would much more than compensate any increase of taxes that might accompany that union. By the union with England, the middling and inferior ranks of people in Scotland gained a complete deliverance from the power of an aristocracy which had always before oppressed them. By a union with Great Britain, the greater part of the people of all ranks in Ireland would gain an equally complete deliverance from a much more oppressive aristocracy, an aristocracy not founded, like ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... government official thought everything permissible that conduced to these results. This state of things led to servility on the part of the clerks and to endless intrigues within the various departments, where the humbler clerks struggled vainly against degenerate members of the aristocracy, who sought positions in the government bureaus for their ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... wagon, man-servant, and livery, belonging to every one, was duly chronicled in the Oldport correspondence of the Sewer and the Jacobin, which journals were wont one day to Billingsgate the "mushroom aristocracy of wealth," and the next to play Jenkins for their glorification. Le Roi, who owned no horses, and had given up dancing as soon as he found that there were many of the natives who could out-dance him, and that the late hours were bad ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... these malign tendencies. He does not make it quite plain to the uninitiated as to how this is to be done. The chief point seems to be that, instead of one man doing it, as in a monarchy, or a few men doing it, as in an aristocracy, everybody is going to do, and whatever everybody does is necessarily going to be all right. Those to whom this appears perfectly plain and satisfactory, of course are "not far from the kingdom of heaven," as nationalism views it. I, for one, however, would like a few of the "data," supposed to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... deliberate criticism manifested by Sonnino and Salandra, entitle these Ministers to the lasting gratitude of their country. For it should be borne in mind that they had against them not only the Senate, the Chamber, a section of the Press, the "cream" of the aristocracy, the puny sons and daughters of the leaders of the Risorgimento, but also, strange to say, the majority of Italian diplomatists in the capitals of the Great Powers, one of whom actually fell ill at the thought that Italy was about to fight shoulder ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... Cisalpine Gothic. It imparts a highly patrician air to the streets with their long lines of deserted palaces, which keep their caste through every change of fortune. Verona has not the fallen look of some old Italian capitals, nor the forsaken air of others, but suggests the idea that once her aristocracy closed their houses and withdrew to some retreat where they maintain their traditions, waiting for better times to return to their former homes. Many of the vaulted carriage-ways frame a glimpse of the rushing river which washes the massive ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... as I thought they would, except for Vanity Fair. It must have been a riot when it first came out. I mean, all those sly digs at the aristocracy, with copious interpolations by Mr. Thackeray in case you didn't get it when he'd pulled a particularly good ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey

... child grew up he should have an education worthy of a prince, and he would be one, too, for there was no longer any aristocracy except that of money, and his boy would have a ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee

... what are the Cavendish aristocracy better than Mrs. Blake, and that class? Even she talks sometimes to me about God and the soul. She says she and Daniel think a great deal about ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... better society than that around him, and has lived among great people, and no one was quicker than the Marten to find out that wherein any one was foolish or feeble. So when Master Rabbit, smoothing down his white fur, said it was the only kind of a coat worn by the aristocracy, Marten humbly inquired, "if that were so, how ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... most potent instrument of knowledge and wealth which Providence has placed in our hands has become for us an instrument of misery and imbecility. Here is the formula of this new law of antagonism, to which we owe the two oldest maladies of civilization, aristocracy and the proletariat: Labor, in dividing itself according to the law which is peculiar to it, and which is the primary condition of its productivity, ends in the frustration of its own objects, and destroys itself, in other words: ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... before, so radiantly handsome, was struck by the change which had taken place during such a brief absence. He was the same Boleslas Gorka, that handsome man, that admirable human animal, so refined and so strong, in which was embodied centuries of aristocracy—the Counts de Gorka belong to the ancient house of Lodzia, with which are connected so many illustrious Polish families, the Opalenice-Opalenskis, the Bnin-Bninskis, the Ponin-Poniniskis and many others—but his cheeks ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... family had united his people with that country. An Aboab had been chief treasurer of the King of Castile; another had been a wonderful physician, enjoying the intimacy of bishops and cardinals. The Jews of Portugal and of Spain had been great personages,—the aristocracy of the race. Scattered now over Morocco and Turkey, they shunned all intercourse with the coarse, wretched Israelite population of Russia and Germany. They still recited certain prayers, in the synagogue, in old Castilian, and the Jews of London repeated them by heart without ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... destroyed the aristocracies, and next become hateful, hated, and incurable themselves, have left no government possible which shall have stability and morality except the democratic. In England my desire is to ward off this result, to which, I think, our aristocracy are driving fast by uniting their cause with the ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... through merit, to the highest offices of state under an Egyptian monarch, and who conceived and successfully carried into execution a comprehensive agrarian policy which had the effect of transferring the landed estates of the great feudal aristocracy to the crown, and of completely changing Egyptian tenures. Nor does any one question, at this day, the reality of the power which the Biblical writers ascribed to the Empire of the Hittites. Under such conditions ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... the views of Johnson and Murray. Those of Johnson are at present in the ascendancy; but they may produce a revolution in favour of the opinion of John Murray against cheap literature. Johnson was the opponent of typographical luxury. Murray, on the contrary, supported the aristocracy of the press, until obliged, "by the pressure from without," in some degree to compromise his views by the publication of the ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... counts and no-accounts, all stashed safely away in castles and fortresses up on the top of hills. The serfs down below did all the work in the fields, provided servants, artisans and foot soldiers for the continual fighting that the aristocracy carried on. Very similar to Europe back in the ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... asked Stoddard mildly. They were coming under the trees now. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair to enjoy the coolness. "My impression was that the youthful aristocracy of every country often made of ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... dissolved. These demagogues," continued the letter, "really affect to persuade the people (to use their own phraseology) that they are only in danger of having their liberties stolen away by an artful designing aristocracy. But should the convention be formed under the most favourable auspices, and should the members be unanimous in recommending, in the most forcible, the most glowing, and the most pathetic terms which language can afford, that it is indispensable to the salvation of the country, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... which suddenly transformed Hungary into a modern state, possessing civil and religious liberty for which the young idealists led by Kossuth had labored with such passionate zeal, was not effected without antagonizing the old aristocracy, all of whose cherished institutions were suddenly swept away; or the semi-barbaric people of the peasant class, who could little appreciate the beneficent reforms. Into the awful civil war that followed, when the horrors of an Austrian-Russian ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... he not been so erect, to balance a "fair round belly," he would have toppled on his nose. Everybody said that he was clever, too—and, moreover, always thought so; for luck had made our friend a rising man amongst the suburban aristocracy of Mizzlington. Of Mrs. Brown, she is his match, and portly too; though older and more crusty—a crummy dame, to whom her lord must bow; for, upon his hinting at duty, and an obedient wife's commanding her husband, she ordered him off, reading the adage as a woman ought. ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... men of extreme views, nor have humble birth and limited education often been recommendations of candidates. It is notable that the first six Presidents were selected from the class which in England is called the "gentry." Washington, indeed, belonged to the high rural aristocracy of Virginia; Mount Vernon was as much a patrician manor-house as are the "halls," "priories," and "manors" of rural England; and he lived there in the style of a country magnate, John Adams belonged to the sturdy New England yeomanry sprung from ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... Queen's officer regarded himself as of a higher grade. Members of the Civil Service and Company's officers met on terms of social equality; but the Civilians looked on themselves as of a higher order, as the aristocracy of the land, and the assumed superiority put a strain to some degree on social intercourse. The persons sent out from this country for the administration of India are called Covenanted Civilians, as they bear a commission from the Queen; ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... Presbyterians belonging to North-East Ulster, and descendants of the men who had defended that Province with such desperate gallantry against the Irish insurgents under the deposed James II. Political power in Ireland was wielded in the interests of a small territorial and Episcopalian aristocracy, largely absentee. The Dissenters belonged to the middle and lower classes, and were for the most part tenants or artisans. Creed and caste antipathies were combined against them. Their value as citizens was ignored. Though their right to worship was legally recognized by an Act of 1719, they ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... down here in the Midlands, where their social standing was so diverse, after they had known each other on terms of equality in the houses of sundry acquaintances in town. For Gudrun had been a social success, and had her friends among the slack aristocracy that keeps touch with ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... is really a government by the best (aristos, the select, the best). This is the sense in which the word was first used. It has come to mean government by a privileged class. Aristocracy seldom, ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... good fun; and it gave me an opportunity of studying the aristocracy in its native haunts, which has made me the Gossip's established ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... it was an inert mass used at will by the despot. The Phoenician states, and Carthage in particular, were mere oligarchies, with commerce for their chief object, and slaves for mercantile or warlike purposes. In the republics of Greece and Italy, the aristocracy ruled, and when, after centuries of bloody struggles and revolutions, the subjects of Rome were finally granted the rights of citizenship, the despotism of the empire suddenly appeared, crushing both ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... would lead to evil, and that it would be wiser to submit to certain irregularities in an established form of government, than by attempting the correction to hazard the safety of the whole fabric. The debate manifested that the Whig aristocracy, now in power, were as anxious to quash this inquiry as the Tories themselves could have been; and it is remarkable, that Burke, Townshend, and others were also adverse to the motion. On a division, however, the motion was rejected by a majority of twenty only; the numbers being one ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... watched the aristocracy from the gallery of the theatre with sharp, envious eyes, and reported their doings to Mrs Yabsley, but Miss Perkins was the first specimen she had ever seen in the flesh. In a week she learned more about the habits of the idle rich than she had ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... reproduction of the preface to the Lecture of 1795. The moral he desires to point is the 'falsehood of extremes'. As Religion is the golden mean between Superstition and Atheism, so the righteous government of a righteous people is the mean between a selfish and oppressive aristocracy, and seditious and unbridled mob-rule. A probable 'Source' of the first draft of the 'Vision' is John Aikin's Hill of Science, A Vision, which was included in Elegant Extracts, 1794, ii. 801. In the present issue the text of 1834 has been collated with that of 1817 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... course, excepted). Ismail Pasha got the Sultan to allow him to take 90,000 feddans of uncultivated land for himself as private property, very well, but the late Viceroy Said granted eight years ago certain uncultivated lands to a good many Turks, his employes, in hopes of founding a landed aristocracy and inducing them to spend their capital in cultivation. They did so, and now Ismail Pasha takes their improved land and gives them feddan for feddan of his new land, which will take five years to bring into cultivation, instead. He forces them to sign a voluntary ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... is the favorite promenade of the Roman aristocracy. At the present day, however, like most other Roman possessions, it belongs less to the native inhabitants than to the barbarians from Gaul, Great Britain, anti beyond the sea, who have established a peaceful usurpation over whatever is enjoyable or memorable in ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... slight elevation with a lawn in front sloping down to the trees from which Jack had emerged. In design it was like a country house of the ancient Roman aristocracy. The walls were of vari-colored brick with inlaid designs representing formal flowers. Two stories in height, with towers at the corners rising another two stories higher, the building was in two wings or sections, joined in front by a marble-tiled walk, roofed and pillared, ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... be the action, unusual and dramatic as that is, but the picture of a peculiar community, one typical of Maryland's Eastern Shore, where we have farmer folk in whom there lives the spirit and tradition of a landed aristocracy. The true essential with such readers, will be the individuals who are drawn with such humour and skill, the mellowness of the scene; even such a detail as the culinary triumph that was Louellen's wedding dinner. A marvellous ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... he knew to be extremely odious to the nation That measure was also become necessary for his own security. All government, purely military, fluctuates perpetually between a despotic monarchy and a despotic aristocracy, according as the authority of the chief commander prevails, or that of the officers next him in rank and dignity. The major-generals, being possessed of so much distinct jurisdiction, began to establish a separate title to power, and had rendered themselves formidable to the protector ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... showed very early in life the bent which afterwards forced him, as it did the naturally timid and retiring Jefferson, to take the leadership of the uneducated masses of the people against the wealth, the culture, and the conservatism of the colonial aristocracy. ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... dignified Hotel Lotti on the Place Vendome was described in the guide books as frequented by the French nobility and the aristocracy; the claim proved to be correct for when I was there two French countesses, an English knight and a Duke had apartments there. The Hotel Lotti is next door to the Hotel Continental and is owned by the former manager of that Hotel. Both the Hotel Continental and the Meurice across ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... or willow gives a soft glow of red, purple or yellow. Only here and there, insists my dream, lest when winter at length gives way to the "rosy time of the year" their large and rustic gentleness mar the nuptial revels of summer's returned aristocracy. Because, moreover, there is a far stronger effect of life, home and cheer from the broad-leaved evergreens which, in duly limited numbers, assemble with and behind these, and from the lither sorts of conifers that spire out of the network and haze of living things in winter ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... misfortune, and so order and power again arise. History is a continual rising and falling, a circle of order and disorder. Governmental forms, even, enjoy no stability; monarchy, when it has run out into tyranny, is followed by aristocracy, which gradually passes over into oligarchy; this in turn is replaced by democracy, until, finally, anarchy becomes unendurable, and a prince again attains power. No state, however, is so powerful as ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... been a Miss Van Duysen. She was a little, weak, useless woman, very proud of her name, which seemed to connect her in some way with the old Dutch aristocracy. In point of fact, Briggs married her on this account; for, like most democrats, he is very fond of anything aristocratic. Mrs. Briggs, nee Van Duysen, has nothing Dutch about her but her name. The Knickerbockers of New York were famous for their thrift, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... it has never been stated—that in any human society the parents are the most important people. The division is not between education and the lack of it, or wealth and the lack of it, or breeding and the lack of it. It is not the aristocracy that matters supremely; nor the "great middle-class"; nor the masses; nor the teachers; nor the doctors; nor the servants of modern industrialism. The classification is a biological one—into parents and non-parents. The non-parents may be invaluable in their way, if only they beget something ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... the goddess Neith'), a daughter of a high officer of state, Poti-phera (meaning, like its shortened form, Potiphar, 'The gift of Ra' the sun-god). Such an alliance placed him at once in the very innermost circle of Egyptian aristocracy. It may have been a bitter pill for the priest to swallow, to give his daughter to a man of yesterday, and an alien; but, just as probably, he too looked to Joseph with some kind of awe, and was not unwilling to wed Asenath to the first man in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... Peschiera, and some pretext was also afforded by the reception given to Monsieur, afterwards Louis XVIII. It was certain that Venice had made military preparations during the siege of Mantua in 1796. The interests of the aristocracy outweighed the political considerations in our favour. On, the 7th of June 1796 General Bonaparte wrote ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Neufchatel is an independent sovereignty, allied with Switzerland; which alliance secures its independence, and every prince, on succeeding to the sovereignty, is obliged to ratify it. The actual government is a mixture of aristocracy and democracy. The sovereignty, which is almost a name, is inalienable and indivisible, and cannot be sold or given to a younger branch of the reigning family, without the consent of the people—it is hereditary, and a female is capable of inheriting ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... political opinions, has been the transformation of the whole country into republicans, at least as far as depends on the costume; and where, as is natural, there exists a consciousness of inveterate aristocracy, the external is more elaborately "a la Jacobin." The equipment, indeed, of a French patriot of the latest date is as singular as his manners, and in both he is highly distinguishable from the inhabitants ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... kings. It was especially between the Neustrian and Austrasian mayors of the palace that this difference became striking. Gallo-Roman feeling was more prevalent in Neustria, Germanic in Austrasia. The majority of the Neustrian mayors supported the interests of royalty, the Austrasian those of the aristocracy of landholders and warriors. The last years of the Merovingian line were full of their struggles; but a cause far more general and more powerful than these differences and conflicts in the very heart of the Frankish dominions determined ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... and immanent theory that this country can best be managed by an aristocracy, a chosen few, working under ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... dismember the country. They cast their eyes across Texas to the fertile plains of Mexico, and so southward. They indulged in the wildest dreams of conquest and of empire. The whole southern continent would in time be occupied and under their control. An aristocracy was to be built up, on which possibly a monarchy would be engrafted. In this way a new feudal system was to be developed, negro for serf, and a race of noble creatures spring forth, the admirable of the earth, whose men should be famed as the world's chivalry, and whose women should be the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... been connected with the history of those herds of white cattle which have been kept secluded, apparently from time immemorial, in the parks of some of our aristocracy.[D] It has been, and still is, a matter of lordly pride to their noble owners, that these cattle are held to be of a distinct and ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey

... you and look upon you as a common "person," and if you attempt any familiarity they look at you as much as to say: "Sir, I am not allowed to associate with any except the 400." Then they turn their backs and act so much like shoddy aristocracy that you would swear ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... Paddington—I like a hansom cab, it goes so fast—and then down to Windsor by the train in a carriage full of such smart people, some of whom I knew quite well by name, though not to speak to. The slang aristocracy, as they are called, muster in great force at Ascot. Nor could anything be more delightful than the drive through Windsor Forest up to the Course—such a neat phaeton and pair, and John and I like a regular Darby and Joan sitting side by side. Somehow that ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... that are English and all the things that are American never before or since received such full and trenchant exposition as was given them by Hawthorne and by Bright. The whole subject of monarchy and aristocracy as against republicanism and democracy was threshed out to the last kernel by champions each of whom was thoroughly qualified to vindicate his cause. Each, constrained by the stress of battle to analyze ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... profound knowledge, qualify him to speak with authority on such a point, if any one might pronounce upon it— hesitates to give a decided opinion. The impression that is left upon my own mind is, that the thirteenth-century monk, as a rule, was drawn from the gentry class, as distinguished from the aristocracy on the one hand, or the artisans on the other. In fact, mutatis mutandis, that the representatives of the monks of the thirteenth century were the Fellows of Colleges of the nineteenth before the recent alteration of University ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... fixed my visitors were announced. This was the first time I had come into contact with any members of the English aristocracy, and I have always had since a very ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... strikes a visitor as utterly ridiculous that a society, the greater part of whose members are essentially parvenus, should assume the tone and mode of thought of an old-world aristocracy, we must yet acknowledge that that society keeps up a great many traditions of refinement which are in great danger of being lost sight of in colonial life. The outward and visible sign may be absurd, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... an Equilateral from the ranks of his serf-born ancestors is welcomed, not only by the poor serfs themselves, as a gleam of light and hope shed upon the monotonous squalor of their existence, but also by the Aristocracy at large; for all the higher classes are well aware that these rare phenomena, while they do little or nothing to vulgarize their own privileges, serve as almost useful barrier ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... but tripped on the curtain-spring. The next instant the green curtain shot up, and there, revealed to that vast and distinguished audience, roamed four enormous chicks, bearing on their backs the most respected and exclusive aristocracy of Europe. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... the family. This tradition is not historical, for the family continued in Pola till the fall of the Signory, and flourished afterwards in Venice and Treviso; but there was certainly a rising then in which the houses of certain of their adherents were sacked. Two members of the aristocracy were appointed captains of the people, but after a month they decided to give themselves to Venice; by the Act of Dedition the Castropola were banished from Pola, Istria, Friuli, and Schiavonia, though they were allowed to ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... these vague links furnished unlimited material for conversation between the two women. Mrs. Pendleton was originally from Savannah, and the names which flowed in profusion from her lips were of unimpeachable aristocracy. Pendleton was a very "good name" in the South, Mrs. Howard had remarked to Elsie, and went on to cite instances ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... certain that BULMER spoke the truth, but I am equally certain that it was unnecessary for him to mention the subject at all. Yet little KINKES, I know, went away persuaded that the aristocracy trembled at BULMER's nod, and that to know him was a privilege. Unfortunately BULMER, with all his good-nature, wearies me, I know I am not worthy to tie his shoe-string, but I am disposed to imitate MONTROND, who, when he ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand

... the preponderant influence from a political or economic standpoint or which is marked by the strength of its numbers. The preponderance of the upper middle class in England has impressed on all the literature of that country the seal of morality belonging to that class; while in France, where aristocracy predominated, one still feels the influence of the aristocratic traditions which are so brilliantly manifested in the pseudo-classic period of its literature. But many reasons have hindered the aristocracy ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... frame and have the happy tumbledown look of the back streets in Charleston or Richmond—those streets where the white trash merges off into prosperous colored aristocracy. Old hats do duty in keeping out the fresh air where Providence has interfered and broken out a pane; blinds hang by a single hinge; bricks on the chimney-tops threaten the passersby; stringers and posts mark the place where ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... father—possibly a farm with a pottery on some part of it—could hardly have been small when it supported the young student for many years in his leisured existence at Rome and Naples under the masters that attracted the aristocracy of the capital. The story of Probus, otherwise not very reliable, may, therefore, be true—that sixty soldiers received their allotments from the estates taken ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... of the big, white pillars of Southern aristocracy, had gone through Congress and the Senate of his country to the tune of "Spend and not spare," which left his widow and three younger daughters and a small son dependent ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... was fitted up with all the elegance wealth could command. The grounds were handsomely laid out, the gardens cultivated to the extreme of art, and in short, it bore more resemblance to the residences we meet on the other side of the water which are occupied by the proud aristocracy of England than the mansion of a ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival

... Haldane was hounded from the Government on the paradoxical ground that he knew too much about the enemy against whom we are fighting. It is certainly true that he has a better understanding than any other statesman of the Prussian perversion of aristocracy and of the true function of science in the State. But it is too much to hope that philosophers should remain Ministers of a State in which ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... God, who will send his angels to bear heavenwards the soul of the gallant Roland. The idea of the poem is at once national and religious—the struggle between France, as champion of Christendom, and the enemies of France and of God. Its spirit is that of the feudal aristocracy of the eleventh century. The characters are in some degree representative of general types, but that of Roland is clearly individualised; the excess of soldierly pride which will not permit him, until too late, to sound his horn and recall Charlemagne ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... substitute and will fight for him." The young woman behaved superbly! Pale, and bewildered, she took the arm of her husband, who continued his objurgations; without a word she led him away to the carriage, together with her children. She was one of those women of the aristocracy, who also know how to retain their dignity and self-control in ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... Of course you know 'em. Well, there are pitch-pine Yankees and white-pine Yankees. We don't talk about the inherited differences of men quite as freely, perhaps, as they do in the Old World, but republicanism doesn't alter the laws of physiology. We have a native aristocracy, a superior race, just as plainly marked by nature as of a higher and finer grade than the common run of people as the white pine is marked in its form, its stature, its bark, its delicate foliage, as belonging to the nobility of the forest; and the pitch pine, stubbed, rough, coarse-haired, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... voted against Sir Francis, and not for Mainwaring. I was one of those who thought that this was a great triumph in the cause of liberty, and I was therefore excessively rejoiced that Sir Francis Burdett should have been successful against all the magistracy, and all the ministerial aristocracy of the metropolitan county. But now, when I look back, and read the speeches of the Honourable Baronet, I only feel surprised that I could have been such a dupe as to expect that any real benefit would ever arise to the people from his exertions. All his promises, all ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt



Words linked to "Aristocracy" :   aristocratic, elite group, samurai, landed gentry, gentry, noblesse, knighthood, blue blood, elite, Ferdinand and Isabella, baronetage, upper crust, baronage, William and Mary, patrician



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