C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Nobility
Nobility should be elective, not hereditary.
Noblest minds are easiest bent.
All nobility in its beginnings was somebody’s natural superiority.
Nobility, without virtue, is a fine setting without a gem.
He who is lord of himself, and exists upon his own resources, is a noble but a rare being.
O lady, nobility is thine, and thy form is the reflection of thy nature!
What is highest and noblest in man conceals itself.
Nature makes all the noblemen; wealth, education, or pedigree never made one yet.
Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great.
Noble by birth, yet nobler by great deeds.
The noblest character is stained by the addition of pride.
If a man be endued with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility.
A noble life crowned with heroic death rises above and outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest empire of the earth.
Nobility of birth does not always ensure a corresponding nobility of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog, rather than a spur.
Of all vanities of fopperies, the vanity of high birth is the greatest. True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Title, indeed, may be purchased, but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid.
Nobility is a river that sets with a constant and undeviating current directly into the great Pacific Ocean of time; but, unlike all other rivers, it is more grand at its source than at its termination.
Talent and worth are the only eternal grounds of distinction. To these the Almighty has affixed His everlasting patent of nobility. Knowledge and goodness,—these make degrees in heaven, and they must be the graduating scale of a true democracy.
Nature’s noblemen are everywhere,—in town and out of town, gloved and rough-handed, rich and poor. Prejudice against a lord, because he is a lord, is losing the chance of finding a good fellow, as much as prejudice against a ploughman because he is a ploughman.
We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society; only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only this dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man.