Snobbery Quotes

I had never thought much of genealogy. A lot of wasted time collecting the names of the dead. Then stringing those names, like skulls upon a wire, into an entirely private and thus irrelevant narrative, lacking any historical significance. The narcissistic pastime of nostalgic bores.

We had enough quite enough snobbery in this world without exporting it to the hereafter.

M. Proust was more severe than M. de Caillavet on Anatole France: "He was selfish and supercilious. He had read so much that he had left his heart in other people's books, and all that remained was dryness. One day I asked him how he came to know so much. He said, 'Not by being such a handsome young man as you. I wasn't in demand, and instead of going out I studied and learned'.

Céleste Albaret

I hate this complete obsession with class, especially at this place, you can hardly say 'hello' to anyone before they are getting all prolier-than-thou and telling you about how their dad's a one eyed chimney-sweep with rickets, and how they've still got an outside loo, and have never been on a plane or whatever, all that dubious crap, most of which is usually lies anyway, and I'm thinking why are you telling me this? Am I meant to feel guilty? D'you think it's my fault or something, or are you just feeling pleased with yourself for escaping your pre-determined social role or some self congratulatory bullshit? I mean, what does it matter anyway? People are people, if you ask me, and they rise or fall by their own talents and merits, and their own labours, and blaming the fact they've got a settee rather than a sofa, or eat tea rather tan dinner, that's just an excuse, it's just whining self-pity and shoddy thinking.... I don;t make judgements about other people because of their background and I expect people to treat me with the same courtesy... It's my parent's moeny and its not as if they got it from nicking people's dole or running sweatshops in Johannesburg or something. They worked fucking hard for what they've got. It's a privilege and they treat it as such and they do their best to give something back. But if you ask me, theres no snob like an inverted snob... Im just so fucking bored of people trying to pass plain old envy off as some sort of virtue.

This is not a "guilty pleasure" of mine, simply because I don't believe in "guilty" pleasures. Snobbery is just the public face of insecurity.

Like so many of his successors in the language-crank world today, though, (Jonathan) Swift not only loathes (the) banal and common change (language); he ascribes it to moral failing.

Robert Lane Greene

Marcia was silent a moment. Then a sort of softer gleam came into her angry eye."Tell me some more about her," she said.Adele clapped her hands."Ah, that's splendid," she said. "You're beginning to feel kinder. What we would do without our Lucia I can't imagine. I don't know what there would be to talk about.""She's ridiculous!" said Marcia relapsing a little."No, you mustn't feel that," said Adele. "You mustn't laugh at her ever. You must just richly enjoy her.""She's a snob!" said Marcia, as if this was a tremendous discovery."So am I: so are you: so are we all," said Adele. "We all run after distinguished people like--like Alf and Marcelle. The difference between you and Lucia is entirely in her favour, for you pretend you're not a snob, and she is perfectly frank and open about it. Besides, what is a duchess like you for except to give pleasure to snobs? That's your work in the world, darling; that's why you were sent here. Don't shirk it, or when you're old you will suffer agonies of remorse. And you're a snob too. You liked having seven--or was it seventy?--Royals at your dance.""Well, tell me some more about Lucia," said Marcia, rather struck by this ingenious presentation of the case."Indeed I will: I long for your conversion to Luciaphilism. Now to-day there are going to be marvellous happenings...

Mmm, being irresistibly likeable is such a trial,' she drawled in an impeccable aristocratic whine. 'One is constantly in demand, but one must do one's duty, mustn't one, dear chap? Noblesse oblige and all that...

To sneer at his imperfect attempt was very bad breeding.

If you assume that the new - and simply because it's new - is always to be better than the old, chances are you've never known anything valuable.

[Snobbishness] is the desire for what divides men and the inability to value what unites them.

Language is changing constantly; printing and modern education have slowed it but have not stopped it. Given all this change, when, exactly, was language PERFECT, in the language pundit's mind? One has the feeling that the decline-mongers would feel rather sheepish has reading any answer. The 1950s? The Edwardian era? The real answer, however rarely expressed, seems to be "when Island it as a young person.

Robert Lane Greene

Confidence is good, but when they hold their heads high like that, it just makes them look cocky and snobbish.

I can't bear literary snobbery.

What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.

An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.

You are perfectly right in objecting to them [modern art], for this one great fault - that they have not yet had time to become old.

Alexandre Dumas

No one knew much about the Twenty-Eighth Infantry. It was not a glamour outfit. They knew about the Big Red One and the Screaming Eagles, about the Eighty-Second Airborne and Hell On Wheels, but not about Twenty-Eighth Infantry. The name was met with a certain silence, as if he was in a room full of Harvard graduates and told them his degree was by correspondence.

I am no novel-reader -- I seldom look into novels -- Do not imagine that I often read novels -- It is really very well for a novel." Such is the common cant. "And what are you reading, Miss -- ?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.

So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment.

Arrogant men with knowledge make more noise from their mouth than making a sense from their mind.

Can I help you?" he said, in a manner which indicated very clearly that not only did he not wish to help them, but also that he resented the implication that he ought to

Graham Austin-King