NOBILITY

A monarch when good is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad he is entitled to none at all. But if you cross a king with a prostitute the resulting mongrel perfectly satisfies the English idea of nobility.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

Essentially, nobilities are foolishness, but if I were a citizen where they prevail I would do my best to get a title, for the consideration it furnishes--that is what we want. In Republics we strive for it with the surest means we have--money.
- Mark Twain's Notebook #40, (Jan. 1897-July 1900)

I out-natived the natives themselves, and felt and spoke and acted like those girls of ours who marry nobilities and lose their democracy the first week and their American accent the next...
- "Three Thousand Years among the Microbes"

Photo courtesy of Dave Thomson