C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Rank
Rank is a great beautifier.
Rank and riches are chains of gold, but still chains.
To be vain of one’s rank or place is to disclose that one is below it.
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp; the man’s the gowd for a’ that.
Of the king’s creation you may be; but he who makes a count ne’er made a man.
Every error of the mind is the more conspicuous and culpable in proportion to the rank of the person who commits it.
If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.
I weigh the man, not his title; ’t is not the king’s stamp can make the metal better.
The finest lives, in my opinion, are those who rank in the common model, and with the human race, but without miracle, without extravagance.
There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humors of a country christening, and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality of Brentford.
Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe, to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals.