Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy.

It has always been the aim of royalty and aristocracy to lower the individual liberty and independence of the common people. A baron and a minute-man could not breathe the same air.

I grew up in a bit of a vacuum. And as a kid, you see 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' and you're like, 'Oh, it's a cartoon.' There's mixed media. It's funny, and there's stop-motion. But as an adult, you figure it out, how the entire underpinnings of their comedy was poking fun at the rank and file of the British aristocracy and the monarchy.

Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation of the past, and fixes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men a sort of instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In this respect aristocracy is far more favorable to poetry; for things commonly grow larger and more obscure as they are more remote; and, for this two-fold reason, they are better suited to the delineation of the ideal.

"Down with tyranny!' Bramble cried. 'Aristocracy! Autocracy! Monocracy! Other ocracy things! You are outnumbered, sir!

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.