71 Quotes About Snobbery

You are perfectly right in objecting to them [modern art], for this one great fault - that they have not yet had time to become old.

Mmm, being irresistibly likeable is such a trial,' she drawled in an impeccable aristocratic whine. 'One is constantly in demand, but one must do one's duty, mustn't one, dear chap? Noblesse oblige and all that...

M. Proust was more severe than M. de Caillavet on Anatole France: "He was selfish and supercilious. He had read so much that he had left his heart in other people's books, and all that remained was dryness. One day I asked him how he came to know so much. He said, 'Not by being such a handsome young man as you. I wasn't in demand, and instead of going out I studied and learned'.

This is not a "guilty pleasure" of mine, simply because I don't believe in "guilty" pleasures. Snobbery is just the public face of insecurity.

To sneer at his imperfect attempt was very bad breeding.

What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.

Veganism needs a PR makeover. Most people think it's a nutty cult where, at initiation, new members receive the International Step of Moral Superiority from which they look down their noses at non-vegans.

The tunnel under the wall of intellectual snobbery is the only way back to common sense reality, but most won't find it because it is beneath them.

Language is changing constantly; printing and modern education have slowed it but have not stopped it. Given all this change, when, exactly, was language PERFECT, in the language pundit's mind? One has the feeling that the decline-mongers would feel rather sheepish has reading any answer. The 1950s? The Edwardian era? The real answer, however rarely expressed, seems to be "when Island it as a young person.