That leaders depend on followers might seem blindingly obvious, but the way that people lower down the ladder interact with those above them gets much less attention than the reverse.
After viewing objects in this light, it would not be very fanciful to imagine, that this world was a stage on which a pantomime is daily performed for the amusement of superiour beings.
She would have regarded the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness which puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a person of high rank owed to herself.
Brummell owed his ascendency to some curious combination of wit, of taste, of insolence, of independence--for he was never a toady--which it were too heavy-handed to call a philosophy of life, but served the purpose.
He took the war as a gift of revenge from the high gods to himself, and the constant burden of his harangues was that these rookies did not appreciate the full gravity and responsibility of " the service" .