D. J. Taylor - The New Book of Snobs (2016)

6 Sourced Quotes

View all D. J. Taylor Quotes

The man who most loudly proclaims his lack of snobbishness is most likely to be a snob.

D. J. Taylor

The cultivation of an arbitrary superiority is a vital part of the curious behavioral compound that makes us who we are.

D. J. Taylor

The idea that the nationalist stance is essentially an extreme form of snobbery is a staple of early Victorian travel writing.

D. J. Taylor

Any kind of social existence has its rules, its shibboleths, its unspoken ordnances and prohibitions, and at one level their enforcement is not so much an adherence to a snobideal as an understanding of how life works, an acknowledgement that most people prefer to associate with their peers and are either amused or fretful when taken out of their customary social milieu.

D. J. Taylor

Perhaps the greatest plank in snobbery's defense is to ask what things would be like if it were taken away. Here the consequences would extend far beyond the boundaries of the individual personal myth.

D. J. Taylor

A snob, all the evidence insists, is one who delights in making judgements that are based on arbitrary criteria.

D. J. Taylor