C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Aristocracy
An aristocracy is the true support of a monarchy.
By blood a king, in heart a clown.
And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who!
You may depend upon it that there are as good hearts to serve men in palaces as in cottages.
I do not understand how an aristocracy can exist, unless it be distinguished by some quality which no other class of the community possesses.
Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.
Where some think, and others do not, there is developed aristocracy. Where all have come to think we have democracy,—the government of the people by themselves.
Aristocracy has three successive ages,—the age of superiorities, the age of privileges, and the age of vanities; having passed out of the first, it degenerates in the second, and dies away in the third.
Amongst the masses—even in revolutions—aristocracy must ever exist; destroy it in nobility, and it becomes centred in the rich and powerful Houses of the Commons. Pull them down, and it still survives in the master and foreman of the workshop.