Plebeian Quotes

#1. Icy and earthy, Helen Mirren is a rare, regal presence in a movie age that values the plebeian over the patrician and mass over class. Lauded with an Oscar and an Emmy for playing both Queen Elizabeths, Mirren has matched her cool aristocracy with a boldness of performance and display.

Richard Corliss

#2. PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.

Ambrose Bierce

#3. The most important in the history of nations and individuals was once the most trivial, and vice versa. The plebeian, who is called today the 'man in the street,' can never see and understand the significance of the hidden seed of things, which in time must develop or die.

Ameen Rihani

#4. When you're a plebeian you want success, and when you're successful you want to be a plebeian again.

Paula Cole

#5. As a small child I had discovered that only two places are available to those who wish to remain concealed. The choices are to be a nonentity or an exception. You either disappear into a plebeian background or move forward to where most others fear to follow.

Bryce Courtenay

#6. Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own artistic titles, their own plebeian stigmas.

Jose Saramago

#7. There is a rabble among the gentry as well as the commonalty; a sort of plebeian heads whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men?in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do sometimes gild their infirmities and their purses compound for their follies.

Thomas Browne

#8. Ah, we shall never have a real aristocracy while this plebeian reluctance to live upon a parent or a wife continues the animating spirit of our youth. It strikes at the foot of the feudal system!

William Dean Howells

#9. The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.

Richard Rorty

#10. The hybrid European - a tolerably ugly plebeian, taken all in all - absolutely requires a costume:

Friedrich Nietzsche

#11. The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian

David Hume

#12. The poor man yields to the rich, the plebeian to the noble, the servant to the master, the unlearned to the learned, and yet every one inwardly cherishes some idea of his own superiority.

John Calvin

#13. Pride is a fault that great men blush not to own: it is the ennobled offspring of self-love; though, it must be confessed, grave and pompous vanity, Iike a fat plebeian in a rove of office, does very often assume its name.

Joanna Baillie

#14. Never let anyone steal your passion and calmness without your permission.

Debasish Mridha

#15. One by one they noted in my reports that I daydreamed far too much, was always somewhere else. Where that somewhere was I cannot say, but it often landed me in the corner sitting on a high stool in full view of all in a conical paper hat.

Patti Smith

#16. The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we'll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually.

Joshua Foer

#17. A real friend would have given you a drink by now."
"Looks like an old friend just did.

Debbie K. Lum

#18. You can easily substitute the intellect for true devotion. Devotion comes from the heart, and from the will. The intellect, you can cerebrally answer things, but you make a big mistake when that happens.

Ravi Zacharias

#19. All governments, the worst on earth, and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them.

Lysander Spooner

#20. Many races were mixed in her, and she was better than any of them taken separately. In looks, in smell, in taste.

Vadim Babenko

#21. Poetry is not a luxury.

Audre Lorde

#22. You'll lie again, you'll do it again. Friends, not friends, friends, not friends, I'm on your dime, I'm on your time, and I don't exist where there is a YOU.

Coco J. Ginger

#23. The opportunities to become an astronaut in Canada were far and few.

Julie Payette

#24. I read for the 'ah-ha's,' the information that makes a light bulb go off in my mind. I want to put information in my mind that is going to be the most beneficial to me, my family and my fellow man - financially, morally, spiritually, and emotionally.

Zig Ziglar