Virtue alone is true nobility. [ Gifford ]

Beauty is a patent of nobility. [ G. Schwab ]

Noblest minds are easiest bent. [ Homer ]

For he who is honest is noble.
Whatever his fortunes or birth. [ Alice Cary ]

Virtue is the only true nobility. [ Proverb ]

Noble souls, through dust and heat.
Rise from disaster and defeat
The stronger;
And conscious still of the divine
Within them, lie on earth supine
No longer. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

However it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets.
And simple faith than Norman blood. [ Tennyson ]

Whenever a noble deed is wrought.
Whenever is spoken a noble thought.
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge. [ Tit. Andron ]

Virtue is the first title of nobility. [ Moliere ]

We'll shine in more substantial honours.
And to be noble we'll be good. [ Thomas Percy ]

Noble by birth, yet nobler by great deeds. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Nobility should be elective, not hereditary. [ Zimmermann ]

Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die,
But leave us still our old nobility. [ Lord J. Manners ]

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death and that vast forever,
One grand, sweet song. [ Charles Kingsley ]

Fond man! though all the heroes of your line
Bedeck your halls, and round your galleries shine
In proud display; yet take this truth from
Virtue alone is true nobility! [ Gifford ]

Vain-glorious man, when fluttering wind does blow
In his light wings, is lifted up to sky;
The scorn of knighthood and true chivalry,
To think, without desert of gentle deed
And noble worth, to be advanced high,
Such praise is shame, but honour, virtue's meed.
Doth bear the fairest flower in honourable seed. [ Spenser ]

What is highest and noblest in man conceals itself. [ Richter ]

Virtue, not pedigree, should characterise nobility. [ Motto ]

Nobility without virtue is a fine setting without a gem. [ Jane Porter ]

The noblest character is stained by the addition of pride. [ Claudianus ]

Nobility of soul is more honourable than nobility by birth. [ Dutch Proverb ]

All nobility in its beginnings was somebody's natural superiority. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

O lady, nobility is thine, and thy form is the reflection of thy nature! [ Euripides ]

If a man be endued with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility. [ Plato ]

Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great. [ Goldoni ]

Nature makes all the noblemen; wealth, education, or pedigree never made one yet. [ H. W. Shaw ]

The first, as indeed the last, nobility of education is in the rule over our thoughts. [ John Ruskin ]

He who is lord of himself, and exists upon his own resources, is a noble but a rare being. [ Sir E. Brydges ]

Friendship is an order of nobility; from its revelations we come more worthily into nature. [ Emerson ]

A noble life, crowned with heroic death, rises above and outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest empires of the earth. [ James A. Garfield ]

The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower. [ Froude ]

I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns! the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate. [ Percival ]

Nobility of birth does not always ensure a corresponding nobility of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog, rather than a spur. [ Colton ]

Fame confers a rank above that of gentleman and of kings. As soon as she issues her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or of it tallow-chandler. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

Nobility is a river that sets with a constant and undeviating current directly into the great Pacific Ocean of Time; but, unlike all other rivers, it is more grand at its source than at its termination. [ Colton ]

Of all varieties of fopperies, the vanity of high birth is the greatest. True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Title, indeed, may be purchased, but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid. [ Burton ]

Talent and worth are the only eternal grounds of distinction. To these the Almighty has affixed His everlasting patent of nobility. Knowledge and goodness, - these make degrees in heaven, and they must be the graduating scale of a true democracy. [ Miss Sedgwick ]

Nature's noblemen are everywhere, - in town and out of town, gloved and rough-handed, rich and poor. Prejudice against a lord, because he is a lord, is losing the chance of finding a good fellow, as much as prejudice against a ploughman because he is a ploughman. [ Willis ]

We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society; only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only this dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man. [ Emerson ]

Take the title of nobility which thou hast received by birth, but endeavor to add to it another, that both may form a true nobility. There is between the nobility of thy father and thine own the same difference which exists between the nourishment of the evening and of the morrow. The food of yesterday will not serve three for today, and will not give thee strength for the next. [ Jamakchari ]