Nobility (virtue)

“ Why, if the nobility is based on renown, the renown is another's! For, truly, nobility seems to be a sort of reputation coming from the merits of ancestors. But if it is the praise which brings renown, of necessity it is they who are praised that are famous. Wherefore, the fame of another clothes thee not with splendour if thou hast none of thine own. So, if there is any excellence in nobility of birth, methinks it is this alone—that it would seem to impose upon the nobly born the obligation not to degenerate from the virtue of their ancestors.'
Song VI.
True Nobility. ”

“ virtue and riches seldom settle on one man: who then sees not the beginning of nobility? ”

“ It is the human nobility and greatness that is the end, and that 'craves,' as the noble who is found wanting in it tells us, 'a noble cunning.' It is no single instrumentality that makes the apparatus of this culture and cure. ”

“ He stands for fame on his forefathers' feet,
By heraldry prov'd valiant or discreet.
With what a decent pride he throws his eyes
Above the man by three descents less wise!
If virtues at his noble hands you crave,
You bid him raise his fathers from the grave.
Men should press forward in fame's glorious chase;
Nobles look backward, and so lose the race.
Let high birth triumph! What can be more great?
Nothing—but merit in a low estate.
To virtue's humblest son let none prefer
Vice, though descended from the conqueror. ”

“ As to the world, I hope that I shall be endued by Heaven with that presence of mind, that serene dignity in misfortune, that constitutes the character of a true nobleman; a dignity far beyond that of coronets; a nobility arising from the just principles of philosophy, refined and exalted by those of Christianity. ”

“ If a humane measure is propounded in behalf of the slave, or of the Irishman, or the Catholic, or for the succor of the poor, that sentiment, that project, will have the homage of the hero. That is his nobility, his oath of knighthood, to succor the helpless and oppressed; always to throw himself on the side of weakness, of youth, of hope, on the liberal, on the expansive side; never on the conserving, the timorous, the lock-and-bolt system. More than our good-will we may not be able to give. We have our own affairs, our own genius, which chain us to our proper work. ”

“ It was a world in which the children of refined, well-bred families fervently believed that he who did not work for the good of the common people was not a man of real honour. Indeed, of what use has the nobility been to the world? ”

“ It is the nature of the noble and the good and the wise that they impart to us of their nobility and their goodness and their wisdom while they live, making it natural for us to breathe the air they breathe and giving us confidence in our own untested powers. ”

“ There is nothing great or noble in events, which are the fruit of passion or chance: true fame results only from the steady perseverance of reason in the paths and pursuits of virtue. The care, therefore, of the commonwealth, and the defence of her liberties, belong to you above all men, because you have done more than all men for liberty and the commonwealth: Your great abilities, your known zeal, your famous actions, with the united call and expectation of all men, are your motives in this great affair ”

“ There is the fact that nobility is an exclusive privilege which all families do not share; that established distinctions rest upon a false principle, and that the peasant hero does not win fame and have his name inscribed in history like the patrician hero; that the domestic virtues of the workingman are not recorded in a book that is always open to his posterity ”

“ It is our duty to live up to it. One who is noble by birth can afford to admit civil equality, but he who has had nobility conferred on him, cannot do so. Will Your Majesty permit me to say one word more? ”

“ I should prove recreant, indeed, in duty to God, my country and liberty, were I to write a book of a purely political, moral or religious character, which would, at this time, receive the flattering commendation of the aristocracy and monarchists of Europe, where religion is a mockery or a farce, or at best, an engine of State, in an unholy alliance with cruelty and oppression, where virtue is shamed into retirement and obscurity, and where morality is among the discarded relics of an obsolete age. ”

“ The worthy one must be noble, therefore, and of the old nobility. He must be young, handsome, intellectual. He must stand out from among his peers by his gifts of mind and person. He must have won distinction in the arena of politics or diplomacy, arms or letters. ”

“ It surely could not be the patronage of that base, profligate, licentious libertine, who during the period of his unfortunate regency, loosened the very foundation of human virtue, polluted the morals of his country, and weakened or destroyed those dearest of ties which bind together in harmony, in happiness and in love, the whole social fabric. It could not surely be the patronage of a monarch who had been reared and educated in such a school as this. No! it was the new spirit which animated the age—the spirit of liberty—the spirit of free inquiry—the spirit of utility. ”

“ I desired to say, that the nobleman has honor, traditionary, inherited obligation; the nobleman has established and has to maintain the maxim, 'noblesse oblige,' 'nobility requires.' What great maxim have riches established? ”

“ It is a fixed maxim in ethics, that to every kind of excellence some honour is due; the general consent then of mankind, the regard shewn them by princes, and the privileges allowed them by the laws; having placed the nobility in a degree of superiority above that of other people; I say these considerations, ought to make us look upon nobility as a kind of excellence, to which, in consequence of its being such, we owe respect and honour. ”

“ It was by conduct such as this, my fellow citizens, that your ancestors made themselves and the republic renowned. Our nobility, relying on their forefathers' merits, tho totally different from them in conduct, disparage us who emulate their virtues and demand of you every public honor, as due, not to their personal merit, but to their high rank. ”

“ I admit freely that we men are to blame for most of the faults of our fair nobility. There is plenty of heroism, abundance of energy, and love of noble endeavor lying dormant in these sheltered and petted daughters of the better classes ”

“ But to what end serves that nobility of which their descendants are so proud, unless it be to prove the robberies and infamy of their ancestor? There are, I confess, a great number of bad men among the common people; but the odds are always twenty to one against a gentleman that he is descended from a scoundrel.... In what consists then the honor of that nobility of which you are so proud? How does it affect the glory of one's country or the good of mankind? ”

“ But if, in the inscrutable providence of the Almighty, this generation is disappointed in its lofty aspirations for the race, if we have not virtue enough to ennoble our whole people, and make it a nation of sovereigns, we shall at least hold in undying honor those who vindicated the insulted majesty of the Republic, and struck at her assailants so long as a drum-beat summoned them to the field of duty. ”

“ A great and potent nobility addeth majesty to a monarch, but diminisheth power; and putteth life and spirit into the people, but presseth their fortune. It is well when nobles are not too great for sovereignty nor for justice ”

“ The nobility is running to seed, or rather the once noble tree is withering and dying; it has borne its fruit and its time has passed away. In Scriptural language, Why cumbereth it the ground? How many of the nobility are now worthless roues, habitual seducers, dried up or half consumed by the fires of passion and debauchery! ”

“ It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, any kind of royalty, howsoever modified, any kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; ”

“ When, in the progress of society, nobles cease to be useful and become only drones; when rich men, vulgar in character, can purchase titles of nobility, so that the nobles cease to be regarded as a peculiar and heaven-appointed race; when men from the masses, unennobled, acquire opulence, education, and that polish of manners which place them on an equality with titled men; when men of genius and letters, introduced into the saloons of the nobles, discover their own vast superiority to their ignorant, frivolous, and yet haughty entertainers ”

“ The crafty policy of the crown had created a new and imaginary good, of which it was the exclusive dispenser. New passions and new ideas of happiness supplanted at last the rude simplicity of republican virtue. Pride gave place to vanity, true liberty to titles of Honor, a needy independence to a luxurious servitude. To oppress or to plunder their native land as the absolute satraps of an absolute lord was a more powerful allurement for the avarice and ambition of the great, than in the general assembly of the state to share with the monarch a hundredth part of the supreme power. ”

“ My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! but, if you stand—and stand I trust you will—together with the fortune of this ancient monarchy—together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom—may you stand as unimpeached in honour as in power; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue; may you stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand the refuge of afflicted nations ”

“ From my earliest years I have adored nobility of soul, and detested dishonor and treachery. I have passed through scenes which will be hereafter told, that the world may qualify by harsh names; yet I have striven to conduct myself throughout them, not only with the ideas of fairness current among reckless men, but with the truth that, under all circumstances, characterizes an honorable nature. ”

“ The privileged aristocracies of the foretime, with all their iniquities, did at least preserve some taste for higher human quality and honor certain forms of refinement by their enduring traditions. But when democracy is sovereign, its doubters say, nobility will form a sort of invisible church, and sincerity and refinement, stripped of honor, precedence, and favor, will have to vegetate on sufferance in private corners. ”

“ Let slates and kingdoms that aim at greatness by all means take heed how the nobility and grandees, and that those which we call gentlemen, multiply too fast; for that makes the common subject grow to be a peasant and base swain driven out of heart, and in effect nothing else but the nobleman's bondslaves and labourers. ”

“ This meant: a nobleman ought to behave himself better than another, to be worthy of his nobility.
'It should now be said, Liberté oblige. This means that a free citizen ought to behave himself better than another, in order to be worthy of liberty.
'You have the duty of putting your name upon the electoral roll at the Mairie of the Commune in which you reside.
'You have the duty of voting, and you must vote according to your conscience. ”

“ Much as it is the fashion to deride the nobility, by decrying their morality and denying their ability, even by those who have the entrée, and therefore may be supposed to know them the best, in point of fact, at the present day, there are amongst them an immense proportion of good and sensible people. ”

“ Not to become a king, nor to gain any other rewards here, or in the next birth or after death in paradise, shall they be inspired to challenge the oppressors, exploiters, and tyrants, but to cast off the yoke of serfdom from the neck of humanity and to establish liberty and peace shall they tread this—to their individual selves perilous and to their noble selves the only glorious imaginable—path. Is the pride in their noble cause to be misinterpreted as vanity? ”

“ Far be it from me; if monarchy wants one spring, it is provided with another. Honor, that is, the prejudice of every person and rank, supplieth the place of virtue, and is every where her representative: here it is capable of inspiring the most glorious actions, and joined with the force of laws may lead us to the end of government as well as virtue itself. ”

“ So long as there is a love for nobility in the human heart men and women of nobility will be placed in power. Life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which a man possesseth but in following the pathway of a noble purpose. ”

“ And the huge assemblage embraced the very cream of the nobility, the aristocracy, the rich and exclusive caste of a great people whose Constitution is founded on the equality of men, and who are wont to gather thus annually for a few hours to parade their material vestments and divert their dispirited mentalities under the guise of benefaction to a class for whom they rarely hold a loving thought. ”

“ If they succeed in making out the noble game, They will win applause and augment enjoyment: Then slaves and money and tribute and taxes, I will send to him as far as I have the means; For a monarch is to be esteemed for his wisdom, Not for his treasure, or his men, or his lofty throne. But if the King and his counsellors are not able to do all this And their minds are not bright enough to comprehend it, He ought not to desire from us tribute or treasure, And his wise soul, alas! must come to grief; And when he seeth our minds and genius to be subtler than theirs. ”