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The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.—Burns.
I weigh the man, not his title; ’tis not the king’s stamp can make the metal bettor or heavier. Your lord is a leaden shilling, which you bend every way, and debases the stamp he bears.
Wycherly: Plain Dealer.
Titles of honor are like the impressions on coin, which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.—Sterne: Koran.
Kings do with men as with pieces of money: they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current, and not at their real, value.—La Rochefoucauld: Max. 160.
Kossuth’s “To him that wills, nothing is impossible,”[[34]] is thus expressed by La Rochefoucauld:—
Nothing is impossible: there are ways which lead to every thing; and if we had sufficient will, we should always have sufficient means.—Max. 255.
Shelley gives the idea as follows:—