"Upper class" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my own father was a student at the Petrograd University at that time. Left wing inclined, in fact. I think he belonged to Kerensky's Social Democrats. At any rate, in spite of his upper class background he made out all right for a time. In fact he became an instructor and our early life wasn't particularly bad." Paul cleared his throat. "Until the purges in the 1930s. It was decided that my ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... vote, when the sloping-shouldered, sloping-skulled youths who proposed to marry them, or had married them, had that right and did not exercise it and showed no information and no concern as to the rottenness of the local government.... The upper class of women are enlisted. Woman suffrage is the one interesting subject of discussion in the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... mean Lord Warburton and his friends—the radicals of the upper class. Of course I only know the way it strikes me. They talk about the changes, but I don't think they quite realise. You and I, you know, we know what it is to have lived under democratic institutions: I always thought ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the frescoes, books, and pictures, as the architects' hammers did on the carved work, of the Middle Ages;[26] and, finally, if we examine the influence which the luxury, and, still more, the heathenism, joined with the essential dullness of these schools, have had on the upper class of society, it will ultimately be found that no expressions are energetic enough to describe, nor broad enough to embrace, the enormous moral evils which ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... of English women. There are but few of these families in California, being mostly those in official stations, or who, on the expiration of their terms of office, have settled here upon property they have acquired; and others who have been banished for state offences. These form the upper class, intermarrying, and keeping up an exclusive system in every respect. They can be distinguished, not only by their complexion, dress, and manners, but also by their speech; for, calling themselves Castilians, they are very ambitious of speaking ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... went to dine with the Hares that evening. They lived in a large house on a fashionable 'road' as certain, of the streets were called. It was a typical upper class, English home. There were many fine old things in it but no bright colors, nothing to dazzle or astonish; you like the wooden Indian in war-paint and feathers and the stuffed bear and high colored rugs in the parlor of Mr. Gosport in Philadelphia. Every piece of furniture was ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... junction on the Oudh and Rohilkhand line; the palace of the nawab of Rampur, and the government college. Bareilly is the headquarters of a brigade in the 7th division of the eastern army corps. The chief manufactures are furniture and upholstery. Bareilly college is a seat of upper class learning for the surrounding districts. It is conducted by an English staff, and its course includes the subjects for degrees in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... all? How happens it that in Paris and London, centres of social wealth, poverty is as hideous as in the days of Caesar and Agricola? Why, by the side of this refined aristocracy, has the mass remained so uncultivated? It is laid to the vices of the people: but the vices of the upper class appear to be no less; perhaps they are even greater. The original stain affected all alike: how happens it, once more, that the baptism of civilization has not been equally efficacious for all? Does this not show that progress ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... that Catharine II. first invaded her territory. Nine-tenths of the populace were no better than slaves, in much the same condition as the Russian serfs before the late emancipation took place. They were acknowledged retainers, owing their service to, and holding their farms at the option of the upper class; namely, the so-called nobility of the country. This overmastering class prided itself on the fact of neither promoting nor being engaged in any kind of business; indeed, this uselessness was one condition attached to ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... harmony within. But he has not yet found out the truth which he afterwards enunciated in the Laws—that he was a better legislator who made men to be of one mind, than he who trained them for war. The citizens, as in other Hellenic States, democratic as well as aristocratic, are really an upper class; for, although no mention is made of slaves, the lower classes are allowed to fade away into the distance, and are represented in the individual by the passions. Plato has no idea either of a social State in which ...
— The Republic • Plato
... our English upper class," said Darrell, with a sneer. "Is there anything they take lightly?—par exemple! It seems to me they carry off this amusement better than most. They may be stupid, but they are good-looking. I say, Ashe"—he turned towards the new-comer who had just sauntered up to them—"on this exceptional ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to drive home Apries II. (Hophra), the Egyptian ally of Zedekiah. The city was taken, the king's sons were killed in his presence, his own eyes were put out; and, after the temple and palace had been burned and the city sacked, he, with all the families of the upper class who had not escaped to the desert, was carried away to Babylon (586 B.C.). Tyre (the old city) in like manner was taken by assault ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... question in Africa upon which our "ignorant" Labour class is far better informed than our dear old eighteenth-century upper class which still squats so firmly in our Foreign and Colonial Offices, and that is the question of forced labour. We cannot tolerate any possibilities of the enslavement of black Africa. Long ago the United States found out the impossibility of having ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... blessedness, of "Mesopotamia"! But when for the considerable rest of the essay we try to find out what humanisation is, why we find nothing but the old negative impalpable gospel, that we must "dismaterialise our upper class, disvulgarise our middle class, disbrutalise our lower class." "Om-m-ject and sum-m-m-ject!" "om-m-ject and sum-m-m-ject," in short, as that famous flash of Thomas Carlyle's genius discovered and summarised Coleridge, and with Coleridge the whole nineteenth century. A screed ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Church from the secular oppression and imposts of the chiefs. But in the case of England, a settled and agricultural country, the conquest was complete and final; the conquerors formed everywhere a new upper class which, though at first alien and oppressive, became in time a national nobility, and ultimately blended with the subject race. In the case of Ireland, though the Septs were easily defeated by the Norman soldiery, and the formal submission of their chiefs was easily extorted, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... half his class. His friends ranged from the highest to the lowest, but it was impossible to "cultivate" him. Servants worshipped him, and treated him like a god. He seemed the eternal example of what the upper class tries ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... think if he isn't a man in society, he is, at least, a man belonging to the upper class. But that, ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... rogue and vagabond; but with his rise into society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted no more cats; and, conscious of his collar, he ignored his old companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognise the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits of a lifetime, he still lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired respectability, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... belfry crowned The hill of Science with its vane of brass, Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round, Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass, And all absorbed in reveries profound Of fair Almira in the upper class, Who was, as in a sonnet he had said, As pure as water, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... his lameness, he grew so well and strong that when he was about eight years old he was placed with his brothers in the upper class of the Edinburgh grammar school, known as the High School. Though he had had some lessons in Latin with a private tutor, he was behind his class in this subject, and being a high-spirited and sensitive boy, he felt rather keenly this disadvantage. Perhaps the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... led the way to a cozy nook near the end of the restaurant, and gave them two seats at a small table covered with a snowy white cloth,—a table that was generally reserved for officers, or "upper class" patrons. ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... on the surface of society, London wears its most radiant smile; when shops are gayest, and trade most brisk; when down the thoroughfares roll and glitter the countless streams of indolent and voluptuous life; when the upper class spend, and the middle class make; when the ball-room is the Market of Beauty, and the club-house the School for Scandal; when the hells yawn for their prey, and opera-singers and fiddlers—creatures hatched from gold, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... handicrafts; the town supports two goldsmiths, who are mulattoes, and have each several apprentices; the blacksmiths are chiefly Indians, as is the case generally throughout the province. The manners of the upper class (copied from those of Para) are very stiff and formal, and the absence of the hearty hospitality met with in other places, produces a disagreeable impression at first. Much ceremony is observed in the intercourse of the principal people with each other, and with strangers. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... mysteries of the higher mathematics, was early remarkable. It might be reasonably expected of the child of seven who was brought down from the primary benches and lifted up to the blackboard to demonstrate a difficult problem in cube root to the big boys and girls of the upper class that he should make rapid and masterful business ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... gentleman. It was their camp-fire which I had seen on the hill side. This gentleman was lording it in true caricature fashion, with a Lord Dundreary drawl and a general execration of everything; while I sat in the chimney corner, speculating on the reason why many of the upper class of my countrymen—"High Toners," as they are called out here—make themselves so ludicrously absurd. They neither know how to hold their tongues or to carry their personal pretensions. An American is nationally assumptive, an Englishman ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... shall bring mind and soul to the control of matter. Her children are not drudges and slaves. The Constitution has declared it, and the spirit of our institutions has confirmed it. The best the land can teach them they shall know. They shall learn that there is no upper class in their country, and no lower, and they shall understand how it is that God and His ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... the student self-government movement, for it recognizes not only the obligation placed upon its members by an institution, but also the wide influence one girl may have on others. Student government knows that upper class girls can determine the spirit of the under classes. Even looking at the matter from the lightest point of view, respectful and law-abiding ways are ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... thankfully accept his offer, and all arrangements were quickly made. We were glad to obtain so intelligent a companion. His kind and gentle manner at once gained our confidence, and though his dress and appearance were those of ordinary Indians of the upper class, he looked like one accustomed to receive the respect of his fellow-men. That he was no common person we were sure. Why he took the interest in us which he evinced we could not tell. John and I talked the matter ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... poor what the saints and the fairies are to the Irish poor, what the large devil with a black face was to the Scotch poor—the poetry of life. In the same way in England we have an aristocracy instead of a Government. We rely on a certain good humour and education in the upper class to interpret to us our contradictory Constitution. No educated man born of woman will be quite so absurd as the system that he has to administer. In short, we do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws. And last of ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... was the organization of the constitution, and the many were in slavery to the few, the people rose against the upper class. The strife was keen, and for a long time the two parties were ranged in hostile camps against one another, till at last, by common consent, they appointed Solon to be mediator and Archon, and committed the whole constitution to his hands. The immediate occasion of ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... Elizabethan ruff, earnest, melancholy eyes, and an air half cavalier, half poet, bringing to mind the chivalrous, graceful, fastidious bard, accomplished scholar, and courtier of his time, the devout believer in the divine right of kings, and of the immunities and privileges of the upper class generally. This Drummond, it seems, was early engaged to a fair young lady, whose death rendered his beautiful retreat of Hawthornden insupportable to him, and of course, like other persons of romance, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... the ministry I am trying to teach my people to have higher ideals. We have to bring our race to that high ideal of race integrity. I am trying to keep the negro from thinking he is hated by the upper class of white people. What the negro needs is self-consciousness to the extent that he aspires to the higher principles in order to stand on an equal plane in attainment but not in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... a believer. And if in saying so it should follow, that even the Devil has more religion than some of our men of fame can at this time be charged with, I hope my Lord —— and his Grace the —— of —— and some of the upper class in the red-hot club, will not wear the coat, however well it may sit to their shapes, or challenge the Satyr, as if it were pointed at them, because 'tis due to them: In a word, whatever their Lordships are, I can assure them that the ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... storekeeper would ever have time to find out. Such is the native way. The storekeeper in this case was named John. Besides being storekeeper, he had charge of the issuing of all the house supplies, and those for the white men's mess; he must do all the worrying about the upper class natives; he must occasionally kill a buck for the meat supply; and he must be prepared to take out any stray tenderfeet that happen along during McMillan's absence, and persuade them that they are mighty hunters. His domain was a fascinating place, for ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... a man with a strong personality, with a great interest in the world led by a dominant aspiration of some sort; and Josephine, in her heart, loved power and admired those who possessed it. Political power especially had that charm for her which it has for most English people of the upper class. There is some quality in the English race which breeds an inordinate admiration for all kinds of superiority: it is certain that if one class of English society can be justly accused of an over-great ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... been treated as a dog, and then, far worse, far, far worse and more difficult to bear with dignity, as a child. A beefsteak? Oh, the shame that seared his soul as he thought of it! This revolting specimen of the upper class had declared, with a hateful smile of indulgent superiority, that all his love, all his sufferings, all his just indignation, depended solely for their existence on whether he did or did not eat a beefsteak. Could coarse-mindedness and gross insensibility go ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... closing days, describes the richer classes as lively and agreeable; the women as having both beauty and wit, but of little education; the poor as hardy, industrious, and intelligent—all full of pleasant humour and vivacity, with a striking resemblance, says Napier, to his countrymen, the Irish. The upper class was mainly Italian in origin, and willingly threw all the responsibility for affairs on the British government. The official class, more numerous in proportion to population than in any country in Europe, scrambled for the petty salaries of paltry posts allotted by popular election. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... of all plebes the yearlings and other upper class men keep themselves loftily apart, except when compelled to drill the plebes or perform other military or other ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... of special aptitudes. "Our great Universities," he said, "Oxford and Cambridge, do next to nothing towards this end. They are, as Signor Mateucci called them, hauts lycees; and, though invaluable in their way as places where the youth of the upper class prolong to a very great age, and under some very valuable influences, their school-education, yet, with their college and tutor system, nay, with their examination and degree system, they are still, in fact, schools, and do not carry education beyond the stage of general and school ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... small literary world of his own. Tibullus published in his lifetime two books of elegiac poems; after his death a third volume was published, containing a few of his posthumous pieces, together with poems by other members of the same circle. Of these, six are elegies by a young poet of the upper class, writing under the name of Lygdamus, and plausibly conjectured to have been a near relative of Tibullus. One, a panegyric on Messalla, by an unknown author, is without any poetical merit, and only interesting as an average specimen ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Times, 1885, is almost wholly composed of newspaper cuttings and caricatures, and is, therefore, so far as it goes, a contemporary authority. Notices of the gambling and frivolity of a portion of the upper class, some not before printed, are given in Sir G. TREVELYAN'S Early Life of C. J. Fox (see above). An independent study should include the chronicle in the Annual Register, Walpole's Letters, JESSE, George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the neighbourhood, save a circle of curule chairs reserved for the members of the Council. Into the midst of the excited crowd of clergy—among whom were sprinkled as many laymen, chiefly of the upper class, as could find room to squeeze in—filed an imposing procession of dignitaries—priests, archdeacons, bishops—all robed in full canonicals; the Bishop of the diocese being preceded by his crucifer. There was as yet no bishopric of Oxford, and the diocese was that ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... with most of her acquaintances married off, and enjoying and flaunting the luxury she might have had—for, they had married men, of "the right sort"—"capable husbands"—men who had been more or less attentive to her—now, these grim and terrible axioms of worldly wisdom, of upper class honor, from her grandmother sounded in her ears like the boom of surf on reefs in the ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... of Market and Front Streets was brisk with life and activity at twelve, the change hour, every day. Here assembled the merchants of the city, members of the upper class who cared enough about the rest of the world to make an inquiry into its progress; men of leisure about town whose vocation in life was to do nothing and who had the entire day in which to do it. All conditions, all varieties ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... and your like have your fixed ideas of the upper class and the lower. One social type fills up your horizon. You are not interested in any other, and, indeed, you know nothing ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to, such homes to settle down in. Sometimes I wish every promising radical kid in the country could get himself into some scandal that would cut him off for life from any chance of being received by this damned respectable upper class!" ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... reason of their wealth and social standing; for here, as well as everywhere else in the South, owners of slaves easily became champions of the extreme doctrines of what they called the constitutional guaranty of their property. They claimed to include most of the "upper class" in their numbers, though this was by no means true in ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... to an upper class, Mr. Bird was laid away, but the children requested his presence. So he entered the new room and became a farmer. He had now to write letters, to arrange rents, etc., and the money had to be made and counted. The letters served for ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... down and Edmund struggled to his feet. Before him stood a tall and handsome man in the attire of a person of the upper class. The old peasant was explaining to him the manner of their capture of the prisoners, and the reason why they had ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... preservation and development of the language spoken by the bulk of the population. He maintained that the West-European civilisation, that had been imparted to the Finnish nation, would never take firm root if only supported by a small upper class—it ought to become the property of the whole people. An educated, Finnish-speaking class must be created, and to this end schools established in which the pupils could receive their instruction in Finnish. The Finnish language must be introduced in government offices, courts of justice, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... said, and with a great deal of plausibility, that this natural and simple toil adds a dignity and a grandeur to human emotions which must necessarily vanish with the vanishing of its heavy burdens. It may be said that the mere existence of an upper class more or less liberated from such labours and permitted the leisure to make so much of its passing sensations, is itself a grievous indictment of our present system. This also is a contention full of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Faculty enlisted, foreseeing the need of surgeons turned its whole force to training the upper classmen, and the Law School so arranged its programme that twelve hours a week were given over to drill. The upper class medical, engineering, and dental students were also enlisted as reserves while ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... upper class have received from nature for nothing, plebeians acquire at the cost of their youth. Write a story of how a young man, the son of a serf, who has served in a shop, sung in a choir, been at a high school and a university, who has been brought ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... matter of chastity, on which the Union touched. We grant at the outset that wherever you have classes, the women of the lower class suffer more or less from the men of the upper class, and anybody who says that seductions, accomplished through the effect on female vanity of the addresses of "superiors in station," while almost unknown here, are very numerous in Europe, would find plenty of facts to support him. But, on the other hand, an attempt made to persuade a Frenchman ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... that many who do not register themselves as Brahmos are in deepest accord with the movement. And it must, moreover, be remembered that the influence of the society is far in excess of the numbers represented. For the movement has drawn its membership, almost exclusively, from the upper class; and the majority of Brahmos are men of education and of position in society. Moreover, they joined this movement under the deep conviction of the utter worthlessness of Hinduism as a way of salvation, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... unenviable position with the freedom and good-fellowship of the club, and chafes under the family bonds. In many cases he breaks them and sets himself free by way of the divorce court. The course of men of the upper class is paralleled by that of the working man or idler who meets similar conditions in a home where the servant does not enter, but where there is a surplus of children. He finds frequent relief in the saloon, and eventually escapes by deserting ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... with perfect freedom. This position has, however, its seamy side. There is in America a certain anarchy in questions of taste and manners which the long possession of a leisured, a cultivated class tends to save us from in England. I never felt so kindly a feeling towards our so-called "upper class" as when travelling in the United States and noting some effects of its absence. This class has an accepted position in the social hierarchy; its dicta are taken as authoritative on points of etiquette, just as the clergy are looked on as the official ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... representative of the nonconformist conscience had hunted up evidence against Wilde and brought him to ruin there would have been nothing extraordinary in a vengeance which might have been regarded as a duty. Strange to say the effective hatred of Oscar Wilde was shown by a man of the upper class who was anything but a puritan. It was Mr. Charles Brookfield, I believe, who constituted himself private prosecutor in this case and raked Piccadilly to find witnesses against Oscar Wilde. Mr. Brookfield was afterwards appointed Censor of Plays on ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... town. To this haven then comes the outcast, hastily collecting his family and all of his wealth of a portable character; the country loses a small landed proprietor, but the town gains a citizen, a freeman, a member of the upper class. ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... he could be hardly said to know what school was. He had been sent indeed to Mr. Lawley's grammar-school for the last half-year, and had learned a few declensions in his Latin grammar. But as Mr. Lawley allowed his upper class to hear the little boys their lessons, Eric had managed to get on pretty much as he liked. Only once in the entire half-year had he said a lesson to the dreadful master himself, and of course it was a ruinous failure, involving some tremendous pulls of Eric's hair, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... position. I belonged, at most, to the class of small proprietors, as they existed in the last century, and filled a very useful and respectable niche between the yeoman and gentleman, considering the last strictly in reference to the upper class of that day. Now, it struck me that Emily Merton, with her English notions, might very well draw the distinctions Rupert had mentioned; nor am I conscious of having cared much about it, though she did. If I were a less important person on terra firma, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... 1843 he accepts a post as schoolmaster at Trnovo, but is immediately at loggerheads with the Greek bishop and departs. Returning to his birthplace he is irritated by the pride and harshness of the upper class, and he attempts to make the people rise against them. They charge him with being a disturber of the peace. "He has travelled through Europe," says their complaint to the Government, "and now in this town he bestrides a horse, brandishes his sword and overwhelms the Turks with ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... charge of the Grand Chancellor and his staff of secretaries, who received, arranged, and registered the official papers as they issued from the various Councils of State. The Grand Chancellor was not a patrician; he was chosen from that upper class of commoners known as cittadini originarii, an inferior order of nobility, ranking below the governing caste, but bearing coat armour. The office of Grand Chancellor was of great dignity and antiquity, and was held for life. The Chancellor was head and representative of the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... time has gone by when nice questions about trifling points of etiquette served to light the flame of civil war, as once they did in France, and to set the whole of the upper class in a kingdom in arms. We owe this, perhaps, as much to the general increase of civilization as to the working of any particular set of rules or system. But the principle which actuated the French nobility, at the time alluded to, is an inherent one in the human mind, and would be likely to ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... like scenery—the impressions of St. Moritz which remain with me have something of the quality, for me, of the illustrations in a French novel. I like to consult them; they are so crisp and daintily defined and isolated and individual. Yet I can only write about an upper class German mamma eating brodchen and honey with three fair square daughters, young, younger, youngest, and not a flaxen hair mislaid among them, and the intelligent accuracy with which they looked out of the window and said that it was a horse, the horse ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... admirable; little short of six feet in stature, he had shapely shoulders, an erect well-formed head, clean strong limbs, and a bearing which in natural ease and dignity matched that of the picked men of the upper class—those fine creatures whose career, from public school to regimental quarters, is one exclusive course of bodily training. But the comparison, on the whole, was to Richard's advantage. By no possibility could he have assumed that aristocratic vacuity of visage which ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... pages of England's history from the days of Harold to those of Edward I. The English language went underground, and became the patois of peasants; the thin trickle of Anglo-Saxon literature dried up, for there was no demand for Anglo- Saxon among an upper class which wrote Latin and spoke French. Foreigners ruled and owned the land, and "native" ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... With the above appellation, a Company has been organised, under the Direction of an Impecunious Duchess, assisted by a Committee of Upper Class Ladies, whose want of ready money has become urgent, for the purpose of selling, at a fixed sale of prices, to any low-bred parvenue who can afford to pay for it, the entree to those exclusive and hitherto unapproachable circles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... school-room, where Mdlle. Perier gave a French lesson to the upper class. Hester belonged to no class at present, and could look around her, and have plenty of time to reflect on her own miseries, and particularly on what she now considered the favoritism ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... murdered by their husbands, brothers, or fathers, only for having been seen by men, and even to the present day a husband would be considered quite justified in the eye of the law if he were to kill his wife for the great sin of having spoken to another man but himself! A widow of the upper class is not allowed to re-marry, and if she claims any pretence of having loved her late husband, she ought to try to follow him to the other world at the earliest convenience by committing the jamun, a simple performance by which the devoted wife is only expected to cut her throat or rip her body ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... not, I think, that particular good, of supreme importance, which results from Lady Ogram's activity. In the rustics' eyes, it would be merely a new device for filling up the ranks of cooks and housemaids, to the sole advantage of an upper class. Of course that view is altogether wrong, but it would be held. The paper-mill, being quite a novel enterprise, excites new thoughts. It offers the independence these people desire, and yet it exacts an obvious discipline. It establishes a social ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... you are amazingly wrong. Good Lord, it's about the most interesting thing I've ever heard. I didn't know anybody could escape from that awful sort of prison-house in which our—I'm English now—in which our upper class immures itself. Yet you've done it. I take it that the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... oppressive money-lenders, and had controlled the decisions of the law courts. It was not in vain that the people now demanded that as the two consuls were practically elected to further the interests of the upper class, so they, the plebeians, should have the election of two tribunes to protect them from wrong and oppression. These new officers were duly appointed, and eventually their number was increased to ten. Their power was almost absolute, but it never seems to have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... St. Patrick's day our house was not packed, but comfortably filled. Of course we had an Irish programme which was just the right key note and the people gave us a hearty reception and many recalls. After the concert, friends came in carriages and took us to the St. Patrick's ball given by the upper class of Irish citizens. It was my first experience at an Irish ball. I did not retire until two o'clock in the morning, pretty well convinced that the Gaelic dancers are people to enjoy their fun to the utmost. March 18th. At the matinee this afternoon a very laughable episode occurred. After ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... which the primary divisions of the embryo stand to each other. For, from its first appearance, the warrior-class, headed by chiefs, is that by which the external acts of the society are carried on: alike in war, in negotiation, and in migration. Afterwards, while this upper class grows distinct from the lower, and at the same time becomes more and more exclusively regulative and defensive in its functions, alike in the persons of kings and subordinate rulers, priests, and soldiers; the inferior class becomes more and more exclusively occupied in providing the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... forth: 'Cittadini,' or the middle class, born in the state, and of more importance than the plebeians; 'Gentiluomini,' or masters of Venice by sea and land, about 3,000 in number, corresponding to the burghers of Florence. What he says about the Constitution refers solely to this upper class. The elaborate work of M. Yriarte, La Vie d'un Patricien de Venise an Seizieme Siecle, Paris, 1874, contains a complete analysis of the Venetian state-machine. See in particular what he says about the helplessness of the Doges, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... with a cane, or appear out of his room without being completely dressed, and with his hat; and whenever a Freshman either speaks to a superior or is spoken to by one, he shall keep his hat off until he is bidden to put it on. A Freshman shall not play with any members of an upper class, without being asked; nor is he permitted to use any acts of familiarity with ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... vicious circle of work that was necessarily underpaid because it was inefficient, and work that was necessarily inefficient because it was underpaid. In the lower class there were no reserves; the dependants lived from hand to mouth, and when hand failed to find food, they had to come to the upper class, first for remission of its claims on them and then for actual subsistence. But the dependence was mutual, and there were no reserves at top equal to the needs of that joint hazard. Penury was only at two removes from the "gentry ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... the numerous charges, dues, and servitudes, often as quaint as iniquitous and vexations, which weighed on the lower orders during the Middle Ages, we must remember how the upper class, who assumed to itself the privilege of oppression on lands and persons under the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... called out for exhibition. Youngsters of the first line they were and even in their privates' uniform they bore the unmistakable signs of belonging to the Russian upper class. Each saluted and made his bow, as if he had come on to do a turn before the footlights. It was not the first time they had been paraded before visitors. In the prince's eye I noted a twinkle, which as much as said: "Well, why ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... of such doctrines in Ireland is this, that whereas in England it is the upper class principally that is militarist, in Ireland it is principally the lower class, and whereas it is the Castle authorities who are always preaching the iniquity of physical force, it is the lower ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... all, from the greatest to the least. But as it would have been intolerably flat, and insipid to the former, had it been wholly written in a stile level to the capacities of the latter; to obviate inconveniences on both sides, an attempt has been made to entertain the upper class of readers, and, by notes, to explain such passages in divinity, philosophy, history, &c. as might be difficult to the lower. The work (if it may be so called) being partly argumentative, and partly descriptive, it would have been ridiculous, had it been possible to make the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... spirit of the English middle class in the present crisis. The poor people welcome to their homes soldiers who in most cases belong to the same strata of society as themselves; and, besides, ninepence a night as billet-fee is not to be laughed at. The upper class can easily bear the momentary inconvenience of Tommy's company; the method of procedure of the very rich in regard to billeting seldom varies—a room, stripped of all its furniture, fitted with beds and pictures, usually of a religious ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... caused by the roller mill. This apparently profitable machine permitted the miller to efficiently separate wheat flour into three components: bran, germ and endosperm. Since bread made without bran and germ is lighter and appears more "upper class" it became instantly popular. Flour without germ and bran also had an industrial application—it could be stored virtually forever without being infested by insects because white flour does not contain enough nutrition to support life. Most health conscious people are aware that white ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... acquired and retain, to a great extent, to the present day. The other caste—the Illiterates—were dependents of the Intellectuals. Without mental training, with few wants, and little expenses, they were as contented, in their sphere, as the upper class were in theirs. Like their masters, they had their hopes, but they never knew what misery was, as one understands it in Europe, and in this felicitous, ambitionless condition, they never urgently demanded education, even for their children. The movement came from higher quarters, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... mildness and kindness held sway. There I encountered mistrust; here I was trusted. There I was under restraint; here I had liberty. Hitherto I had hardly ever been with boys of my own age; here I found forty schoolfellows, for I joined the upper class of the town school.[13] ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... thirty years of age, wearing the working livery of servants of the upper class,—the long striped waistcoat with sleeves, and the white linen apron,—was ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... in the crowd? Did all men flee his presence till he found Life too intolerable? Nay; not so! Death came too close upon the heels of crime, He had but done what all his tribe deemed just: All the great mass—I mean the upper class— The Rabbis, all the Pharisees and Priests Ay, and the lower mob as well who cried, "Give us Barabbas! Christus to the cross!" These men were all of them on Judas's side, And Judas had done naught against ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story
... privileges should be confirmed. It was argued for the Crown that 10,000 acres of land had been quietly absorbed by the Family while there was no king in England: but there happened in this case what happened in every other since the upper class, the natural leaders of the people, had curbed the tyranny of the King—Charles capitulated. Then followed (of course) popular rising; it was quelled. Before their long struggle for freedom against the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... attempts at fiscal reform, and a too great leaning toward European habits and associates, roused the animosity of the people, and of the conservative party in the upper class. The Sultan's eldest brother, who had been set aside in his favour, was intriguing against him; the usual Cherifian Pretender was stirring up the factious tribes in the mountains; and the European powers were attempting, in the ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... that for sly roughness had never been equalled by any other team that had elected to take the floor in that gymnasium. Yet so cleverly did they execute them that beyond an occasional foul they managed to elude the supposedly-watchful eyes of the referee, an upper class friend of the French girl's, and rapidly piled ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... that passed between her and her husband and very little else remains that she wrote. From the few letters that do survive it is apparent that her education was slender, though no more so than that of most women of her day even in the upper class. She had a fondness for phonetic spelling, and her verbs and subjects often indulged in family wrangles. She seems to have been conscious of her deficiencies in this direction or at least to have disliked ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... the middle school belong to the upper class of society and they should not be looking after material pleasures only, for it would eventually have effect upon their personal character. But we are human, and it would be intolerable in a small town ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... are most peculiar. The women of the upper class are allowed to take exercise only at this time. Men formerly were excluded from the streets at night, but now are seen. Some one has compared this nocturnal city graphically with the old idea of the resurrection. Many of the men are supported by the labor of the women of their household. ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... there are bookshops in the Strand and large circulating libraries in Oxford Street, and these thoroughfares are thronged with the lower middle-class, therefore the lower middle-class buys or hires books. In my industrial group the institutions and machinery perfected by the upper class for itself do not exist at all, and one may watch the lower without danger of being led to false conclusions by the accidental propinquity of phenomena that have really nothing whatever ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Japanese history down to the second half of the seventeenth century, the canons and customs were dictated solely by the upper class, and neither merchants nor artisans were recognized as possessing any social or literary influence whatever. But in the middle period of the Tokugawa Bakufu—the Genroku period, as it is commonly called—the tradesman ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... liquor is brewed from a mixture of rice and millet, and from its quickly turning sour seems to have little strength, and to have undergone a very imperfect degree of fermentation. Their hot wine is seldom used except by the upper class of people who, not satisfied with the strong empyreumatic flavour communicated in the distillation, drink it boiling hot ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... and richest farmer (he took an upper class in school more in deference to his position than to the rather scanty education which accompanied it) rose and addressed ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... time we are able to divide them into five classes: the upper class of white Puerto Ricans; the lower class of whites, or peasants; the negroes; the mixed people of negro and Indian or other blood; and ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... first confronted and then coalesced with the moneyed class, and the united orders have been forced to yield theoretical equality to almost the entire nation, while still retaining real authority in their own hands. They have seen a middle class coquetting with a lower class in order to force an upper class to share with it its privileges, and an upper class resorting in its turn to the same alliance; and they may have noted something more than a superficial resemblance between the tactics of the patres and nobiles ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... thorough believer in class and class distinction and said that he hoped to see the day when the world would be ruled by an upper class who would see that the lower classes had all that was good for them, but would not be allowed to turn the world upside down with their clumsy illogical reforms and new religions, Saint-Simonianism, humanitarianism, or as a matter of ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... at the reality of the family among the poor; what is it among the rich? Does the wealthy mother of the upper middle-class or upper class really sit among her teeming children, teaching them in an atmosphere of love and domestic exaltation? As a matter of fact she is a conspicuously devoted woman if she gives them an hour a day—the rest of the time they spend with nurse or governess, and when they are ten ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... may be divided into two classes: the caste which rules, largely Prussian, militaristic, and bureaucratic; and that which, although desirous of more republican institutions and potentially capable of liberal views, is constrained to obey the first or ruling class. This upper class is not friendly to the modern women's-rights movement. Perhaps it has read too much Schopenhauer. This amiable philosopher, whose own mother could not endure living with him, has this to say ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... of thirteen or fourteen. Casting my eyes into the yard, I saw the spiked helmet in the shape of the half-military manoeuvres of a class which the teacher of gymnastics was training for the severer drill of five or six years later. I visited the "prima," or upper class of a gymnasium, and here was the spiked helmet in a connection that seemed at first rather irreverent. After all, however, it was only thoroughly Prussian, and deserved to be looked upon as a comical incongruity rather ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Trubnaia Plastchad has a great reputation in Moscow for its cuisine, and is the favourite restaurant and resort of the upper class; it has an imposing general luncheon and dining-hall, also separate saloons for private dinner-parties. Most of the official banquets ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... earth from Rome—even if the passing is a temporary social phenomenon, has a curious symbolic timeliness, coming when the working class is rising. It leaves Rome almost as middle class as Kansas City and Los Angeles! For in Rome one feels that the upper class, the ruling class of other centuries, is weaker than it is elsewhere in the world. They tell you flippantly that the king is training his son to run for president. The high caste Romans have an Austrian pride, that ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... daughter, but John Preston married his sister. Miss Elizabeth Patton, while crossing the Shannon in a boat, met the handsome John Preston, then a young ship carpenter, and an attachment grew out of their accidental meeting. But as Miss Patton belonged to the upper class of society, there was a wide gulf between their conditions, and a runaway match was the only way out of the difficulty. Gov. James Patton Preston was named after his grand-uncle. James Patton was born in County Londonderry, Ireland, in 1692. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... people, and the theatre in his day was a popular amusement for the multitude, probably more than it was a recreation for those who enjoyed the culture of letters. A taste for letters was prevalent among the upper class, and indeed was fashionable among both ladies and gentlemen of rank. In this the court of Elizabeth set the fashion. The daughter of the duchess was taught not only to distill strong waters, but to construe Greek. When the queen was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... leadership in peace and war. The latter, moreover, solely enjoyed the privilege of carrying on the occupations of miller and innkeeper, and the peasant was compelled to mill with him. When after the foundation of the principalities the upper class was established on a feudal basis, the peasantry were subjected to constantly increasing burdens. Impoverished and having in many cases lost their land, the peasants were also deprived at the end of the sixteenth century of their freedom of movement. ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... as they're begun, things soon will come about, And ve shall be the upper class, and turn the others out; Their laws ve'll execute ourselves, and raise their hevelation, That's tit for tat, for they'd make that the ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... inspiration of English novels and the tutelage of a woman friend who visited in New York and often went abroad, was developing ideas of family and class and rank. She talked feelingly of the "lower classes" and of the duty of the "upper class" toward them. Her "goings-on" created an acid prejudice against higher education in her father's mind. As she was unfolding to him a plan for sending Hampden to Harvard he interrupted with, "No ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... large equipment. The man who comes forward to shape a country's policy has truly no end of things to consider. He must be aware of the condition of the people: no statesman must fall into the sincere but thoroughly upper class blunder that President Taft committed when he advised a three months' vacation. Realizing how men and women feel at all levels and at different places, he must speak their discontent and project their hopes. Through ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the back part of the room, where we could have a good view of all the tables. Our table was large enough to seat four comfortably, and presently, as the room became crowded, the proprietor, with many excuses, asked if he could seat two gentlemen with us. They were upper class Italians, exceedingly polite, and apologized profusely for intruding upon us. In a few minutes another gentleman entered and our companions at once began frantic gesticulations and called him to our table, where room was ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... extortionate rents, partly worked out in virtually forced labour, but by extortionate tithes paid to the alien Anglican Church, in addition to the scanty dues willingly contributed to the hunted priests of his own prescribed religion. His resident upper class—though we must allow for many honourable exceptions—was the Squirearchy, satirized by Arthur Young as petty despots with the vices of despots; idle, tyrannical, profligate, boorish, fit founders ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... parrots and myriad other caged birds hung in their cages about the colonnade around the court, and Bell found Paula being introduced to a pale young man in the stiff collar and unspeakably formal morning clothes of the South American who is of the upper class. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... business to take "a mouthful of dinner" with him, and treating them with liquors; for he was not an utter temperance man, though moderate in his potations. I suspect he would turn out a pattern character of the upper class of New England yeomen, if I had an opportunity of studying him. Doubtless he had been selectman, representative, and justice, and had filled all but weighty offices. He was highly pleased with the new mill ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... young men must gild their spurs, but they need not win them. The equal division of property keeps the younger sons of rich people above the necessity of military service. Thus the army loses an element of refinement, and the moneyed upper class forgets what it is to count heroism among its virtues. Still I don't believe in any aristocracy without pluck as its backbone. Ours may show it when the time comes, if it ever ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ground floor, with the doors leading to the seven classes, where I had passed nearly every day for three years. There was a throng; the teachers were going and coming. My schoolmistress of the first upper class greeted me from the door of the ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... It is difficult to fight against this when modern civilisation is tainted with such a universal contamination of avarice. I have realised it myself in the little boys of my own school. For the first few years there is no trouble. But as soon as the upper class is reached, their worldly wisdom—the malady of the aged—begins to assert itself. They rebelliously insist that they must no longer learn, but rather pass examinations. Professions in the modern age are more numerous and lucrative than ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... himself seems to have become discouraged and to have abandoned his own ideal, for only seven years after writing the above he came to advocate the division of the whole national school system into three classes: that for the upper class, that for the middle class, and that for the masses of the people—and he even insisted that this division is democratic if the elevation of the pupil from one class to the other is made "easy."[87] Now democracy does not require ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... know, don't know a thing at all." And, understanding her pain and her uneasiness—they who had mothers, too, there at home—they rendered her a thousand little services. She loved them well, moreover, her four enemies, since the peasantry have no patriotic hatred; that belongs to the upper class alone. The humble, those who pay the most because they are poor and because every new burden crushes them down; those who are killed in masses, who make the true cannon's prey because they are so many; those, in fine, who suffer most cruelly ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the triumph of all the forces that banned public nakedness everywhere and altogether. If, as Pudor insists, nakedness is aristocratic and the slavery of clothes a plebeian characteristic imposed on the lower classes by an upper class who reserved to themselves the privilege of physical culture, we may perhaps connect this with the outburst of democratic plebeianism which, as Nietzsche pointed out, reached its climax in the nineteenth ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis |
