quotations about nobility
It matters not from what stock we are descended so long as we have virtue; for that alone is true Nobility.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
For new nobility is but the act of power, but ancient nobility is the act of time.
FRANCIS BACON
The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon
There are epidemics of nobleness as well as epidemics of disease.
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
Short Studies on Great Subjects
Better not to be at all
Than not be noble.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Princess
Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Nobility does not consist in magnificence of dress or eminence of rank. Art thou virtuous? Thou art sufficiently noble.
CAO-TSOU
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is a great question that is still not resolved, whether nobility is prescribed or whether it is acquired irrevocably from the right of several generations.
GILLES-ANDRE DE LA ROQUE
Traite de la noblesse
The noblest names in history are those, the records of whose lives are written in their own blood. To suffer is grander than to do: this has passed into a proverb. For illustrious lives we ransack, not palaces, but prisons.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Noble people don't do things for the money, they simply have money, and that's what allows they to be noble.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Hag-Seed
A noble soul alone can noble souls attract;
And knows alone, as ye, to hold them.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Torquato Tasso
Nobility is a lie. A pretense that high standing comes from anything more than money or martial prowess. Any dolt can play the noble, and as you'll discover in time, daughter, it's mostly dolts who do.
ANTHONY RYAN
Tower Lord
I will bow myself before him who is influenced by a noble conviction, and who only desires that which is conducive to good, be he prince or man of the people.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
The Story of My Life
Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.
ALBERT PIKE
Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
If antiquity be the test of nobility, as many affirm and none deny ... then cheese is a very noble thing.
HILAIRE BELLOC
First and Last
Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Sonnet IV
As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,
So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Yussouf"
Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great.
CARLO GOLDONI
Pamela
Nobility is kept alive and strong when it is attached to wealth, and without money it is like a dead thing, for those who are in need have often to turn their hands to vile things.
MARTIN DE VICIANA
attributed, The European Nobility in the Eighteenth Century
His nature is too noble for the world:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for's power to thunder.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Coriolanus