“May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?”
“If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review,in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson