Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

No man is safe above but he that will gladly be beneath.

There is merit without rank, but there is no rank without some merit.

When fortune surprises us by giving us an important position, without having led us to it by degrees, or without our being elevated to it by our hopes, it is almost impossible for us to maintain ourselves suitably in it, and appear worthy of possessing it.

The good Lord sees your heart, not the braid on your jacket, before Him we are all in our birthday suits, generals and common men alike.

A throne is only a bench covered with velvet.

There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

That in the captains but a choleric word Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.

It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.