Lily Collins Quotes

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

In terms of the class structure that you see so much in European portraiture, I don't think one feels that in America in the 21st century. But we have these other kinds of social structures now, like celebrity, who establish new hierarchies.

There'll always be that prep in me that I can't seem to get rid of.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It's fine to be a pop star. 'Oh, it's great, lots of fun, aren't they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!'

I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education.

It was hugely helpful to me, being South African. I have never felt uncomfortable in posh society because I don't see what it is that I'm meant to be bowing the knee about.

I do speak well as I went to a posh school. But I come from no real breeding.

Having gone to a public school, I thought I knew about posh people. But I didn't know anything until I went to Oxford.

My mother was a waitress in a Lyons Corner House, but she married up. She was keen on bettering herself. She taught me how to use the right knives and forks and behave properly.

The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.

My wife thinks I have an obsession with social class. So I guess I have an obsession with social class. It probably stems from feeling like an outcast.

There is a process of social and of political differentiation going on in the real working class all the time.

I had been in a film, playing a young British aristocrat. My wife told me that she was invited to a dinner and she invited me to dinner and the hostess had seen me and said, 'You cannot bring him.' but I think that I've done enough to shatter the image.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

I've never felt entirely comfortable in high society. I'm more comfortable talking to the bar staff than the super-rich. I don't really get what makes them tick.

England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.

Whether you like the look or not, that tailcoat is a tough shell, a suit of armour. The posh boy is a hardy species.

By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else.

In my position, I could be a debutante. But we only got to this position by being a politically active family.

I've got to be high class... Which is sad, because I like bars.

I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.

The working class of England today have no vision of society beyond the acquisitive - no version of themselves or their habits as anything other than transitional, on their way up or on their way out. The working class, at best, is a waiting room for people who aim to become middle class if possible.