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Snobbishness Quotes

Browse 24 quotes about Snobbishness.

Snobbishness Quotes

“The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I’ll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction—until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define “literature”. The Latin root simply means “letters”. Those letters are either delivered—they connect with an audience—or they don’t. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that’s because there are trashy facets of humanity. 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.”

TruthReadingLiteratureSnobbishnessTrashy Books
Author:Brent Weeks
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“Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did; nor could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.”

HumorBeautyVanitySnobbishness
Book:Persuasion
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“You despise the real bourgeois classes for all their snobbishness and their snobbish voices and ways. You do, don't you? Yet all you put in their place is a horrid little refusal to have nasty thoughts or do nasty things or be nasty in any way. Do you know that every great thing in the story of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?”

LoveLifeArtFeelingsTruthBeautifulPassionBeautyClassThoughtsHatredThoughtDespiseNastyRefusalBourgeoisSnobSnobbishClassesSnobbishnessHorrid
Book:The Collector
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“Arrogant men with knowledge make more noise from their mouth than making a sense from their mind.”

InspirationalWritingMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomMotivationalQuotesKnowledgeSpeechWittyWitNoiseCommon SenseVanityLoudArroganceMovieReasonableStoryContemptArrogantRhetoricSayingsCreative WritingSlogansEgotismAmit KalantriAmit Kalantri QuotesPublic SpeakingConceitProverbsSocial NetworkingBloggingCharactersSenseAmit Kalantri WriterDisdainAdageNovel WritingBook WritingEssayMouthSwaggerHubrisScriptAdvertisementBlogSnobberyMovie DialogueScript WritingCatchphrasesAlliterationsTag LinesScriptwritingCatch LinesSpeechwritingCondescensionPunchlineInsolencePretentiousnessBoastingMockingBlusterHaughtinessSelf ImportanceSnobbishnessSneeringSuperciliousnessAffectation ScornBumptiousnessHigh HandednessImmodesty LoftinessImperiousness PrideLordlinessScoffing PresumptionSense Of Superiority PompositySmugness Pretension
Book:Wealth of Words
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“I was to grow used to hearing, around New York, the annoying way in which people would say: 'Edward Said, such a suave and articulate and witty man,' with the unspoken suffix 'for a Palestinian.' It irritated him, too, naturally enough, but in my private opinion it strengthened him in his determination to be an ambassador or spokesman for those who lived in camps or under occupation (or both). He almost overdid the ambassadorial aspect if you ask me, being always just too faultlessly dressed and spiffily turned out. Fools often contrasted this attention to his tenue with his membership of the Palestine National Council, the then-parliament-in-exile of the people without a land. In fact, his taking part in this rather shambolic assembly was a kind of noblesse oblige: an assurance to his landsmen (and also to himself) that he had not allowed and never would allow himself to forget their plight. The downside of this noblesse was only to strike me much later on.”

New YorkBigotryAmbassadorsDressPalestiniansSnobbishnessEdward SaidPalestinian National Council
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as America. Particularly is this true of the American woman of the middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does.”

MenDoeCountryFactsAmericaWonderClassMiddleMoralityEqualGoodnessTraditionVoteClaimsNotionSillySuperiorsArrogancePurityMiddle ClassCan NotMiraculousConceitExaltedSuffrageAmerican WomanAccentuateSuffragistsSnobbishness
Book:Anarchy and the Sex Question: Essays on Women and Emancipation, 1896–1926
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“The fetish of the great university, of expensive colleges for young women, is too often simply a fetish. It is not based on a genuine desire for learning. Education today need not be sought at any great distance. It is largely compounded of two things, of a certain snobbishness on the part of parents, and of escape from home on the part of youth. And to those who must earn quickly it is often sheer waste of time. Very few colleges prepare their students for any special work.”

NeedsTwoHomeTodayYoungDesireCertainParentSpecialYouthStudentsCollegeWasteDistanceUniversityGenuineTwo ThingsExpensiveWasting TimeSheerYoung WomenAcademiaFetishSnobbishnessEducation Today
Author:Mary Roberts Rinehart
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“The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.”

MenDefinitionsCraveSnobSnobbishness
Book:RICHARD HANNAY Complete Collection – 7 Mystery & Espionage Books in One Volume (Unabridged): The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, The Three Hostages, The Island of Sheep, The Courts of the Morning & The Green Wildebeest
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“I suppose there is no place in the world where snobbery is quite so ever-present or where it is cultivated in such refined and subtle forms as in an English public school. Here at least one cannot say that English ‘education’ fails to do its job. You forget your Latin and Greek within a few months of leaving school — I studied Greek for eight or ten years, and now, at thirty-three, I cannot even repeat the Greek alphabet — but your snobbishness, unless you persistently root it out like the bindweed it is, sticks by you till your grave.”

WorldYearsSchoolJobsFormThreeForgetFailingMonthsTenRootsSticksLeavingEightGravesGreekThirtyRepeatsSubtleLatinPublic SchoolRefinedPlaces In The WorldAlphabetSnobberySnobbishnessEnglish EducationLatin And GreekLeaving School
Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: The road to Wigan Pier
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“As we are concerned with what others think of us, so we are anxious to know all about them; and from this arise the crude and subtle forms of snobbishness and the worship of authority. Thus we become more and more externalized and inwardly empty. The more externalized we are, the more sensations and distractions there must be, and this gives rise to a mind that is never quiet, that is not capable of deep search and discovery.”

ThinkingKnowsGivingMindFormQuietAuthorityWorshipCapableDiscoveryConcernedEmptyAriseSubtleGossipSensationsDistractionAnxiousCrudeDeep SeaSnobbishness
Book:Commentaries on Living 2
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“Silence is difficult and arduous; it is not to be played with. It isn't something that you can experience by reading a book, or by listening to a talk, or by sitting together, or by retiring into a wood or a monastery. I am afraid none of these things will bring about this silence. This silence demands intense psychological work. You have to be burningly aware - aware of your speech, aware of your snobbishness, aware of your fears, your anxieties, your sense of guilt. And when you die to all that, then out of that dying comes the beauty of silence.”

BookTogetherDiesReadingDifficultSilenceDyingListeningDemandAnxietySittingGuiltWoodsIntensePsychologicalRetiringSilence IsMonasteriesSnobbishnessSitting Together
Author:Jiddu Krishnamurti
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