Thomas Huxley Quotes

And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

I'll do shoes for the lady who lunches, but it would be, like, a really nasty lunch, talking about men. But where I draw the line, what I absolutely won't do, is the lady who plays bridge in the afternoon!

We're a phenomenally snobby society, and it's such a rich seam. 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.

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent.

Eccentricity is usually owned by middle-class and upper-class people. If you are working class and eccentric, then you're just mad.

Because I sometimes shopped in Waitrose, I thought I was actually quite posh. I've realised that I'm basically a scullery maid. Even the middle-class people who I meet in parliament, people who live in London - which I think is remarkable because how can anybody afford to live there - seem much, much more middle class than me.

Class is really interesting to me, maybe because I'm from England where there is a pretty hideous, deep-rooted obsession with class. I don't like the obsession with class, but it certainly interests me.

Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen. [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.

Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing behaviour of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes.

Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.

The difference between people isn't in their class, but in themselves. Only from the middle classes one gets ideas, and from the common people--life itself, warmth. You feel their hates and loves.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means -one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.

Marriages are so complicated that no one person is the culprit. But, I am really interested in class without really realizing that I am. It's more the manifestations of different classes that interest me.

We all like to think of ourselves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely difficult for the English middle class to suppose that the working class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself. I am afraid this must be unlearned.

The most striking thing about the rich is the gracious democracy of their manners -- and the crude vulgarity of their way of life.

The English, of all ranks and classes, are at bottom, in all their feelings, aristocrats. They have some concept of liberty, and set some value on it, but the very idea of equality is strange and offensive to them. They do not dislike to have many people above them as long as they have some below them.

There's nothing like being in fashion. A man that has once got his character up for a wit is always sure of a laugh, say what he may. He may utter as much nonsense as he pleases, and all will pass current. No one stops to question the coin of a rich man; but a poor devil cannot pass off either a joke or a guinea without its being examined on both sides. Wit and coin are always doubted with a threadbare coat.

Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.

Aristocrats have heirs; the poor have children; the rest keep dogs.

The worst vulgarity is to avoid vulgarity solely on the grounds that it is vulgar.

If you would marry suitably, marry your equal.

When I look out [the window] at the big houses on either side of the road, it's obvious we've entered the rich side of town. Poor people don't post signs like NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE DRIVE, PRIVATE PROPERTY, MONITORED BY CAMERA SURVEILLANCE. I should know because I've been poor my entire life, and the only person I know who ever posted a sign like these is my friend...and he actually stole the sign off a rich guy's yard.