Rank

Rank is the level of one's position in society.

B

 * RANK, n. Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.
 * Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911).


 * Virtue will have greater claims To love, than rank with vice combin'd.
 * Lord Byron, “To E,” Poetical Works, Volume 1

C

 * Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by thanking his rank for his talent.
 * Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, vol. 1 (1820), # 8

E

 * It is not my place in society that makes me well off, but my judgments, and these I can carry with me … These alone are my own and cannot be taken away.
 * Epictetus, in Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, p. 111

G

 * Ich weiß wohl, daß wir nicht gleich sind noch sein können; aber ich halte dafür, daß der, der nötig zu haben glaubt, vom sogenannten Pöbel sich zu entfernen, um den Respekt zu erhalten, ebenso tadelhaft ist als ein Feiger, der sich vor seinem Feinde verbirgt, weil er zu unterliegen fürchtet.
 * I know very well that we are not all equal, nor can be so; but it is my opinion that he who deems it important to keep aloof from the so-called rabble, in order to maintain their respect, is as much to blame as a coward who hides himself from his enemy because he fears defeat.
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1884)

N

 * The man whose task and practice is to investigate souls will use precisely this art in a number of different forms in order to establish the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will put it to the test for its instinct of reverence.
 * Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, I. Johnston, trans., § 263

S

 * Compared with genuine personal advantages, such as a great mind or a great heart, all the privileges of rank, birth, even royal birth, wealth, and so on, are as kings on the stage to kings in real life.
 * Arthur Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 315


 * What a man is by himself, what accompanies him into solitude, and what no one can give to him or take from him is obviously more essential to him than everything he possesses, or even what he may be in the eyes of others.
 * Arthur Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 317


 * While Nature sets very wide differences between man and man in respect both of morality and of intellect, society disregards and effaces them; or, rather, it sets up artificial differences in their stead,—gradations of rank and position, which are very often diametrically opposed to those which Nature establishes. The result of this arrangement is to elevate those whom Nature has placed low, and to depress the few who stand high. These latter, then, usually withdraw from society, where, as soon as it is at all numerous, vulgarity reigns supreme.
 * Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, T. B. Saunders, trans., § 9