Your candlesticks might be handsomer (and indeed they had a very fine effect upon the dinner-table), but then Mr.Jones's silver (or electro-plated) dishes were much finer.

You had more carriages at your door on the evening of your delightful soirees than Mrs.Brown (there is no phrase more elegant, and to my taste, than that in which people are described as "seeing a great deal of carriage company"); but yet Mrs.Brown, from the circumstance of her being a baronet's niece, took precedence of your dear wife at most tables.

Hence the latter charming woman's scorn at the British baronetcy, and her many jokes at the order.

In a word, and in the height of your social prosperity, there was always a lurking dissatisfaction, and a something bitter, in the midst of the fountain of delights at which you were permitted to drink.
There is no good (unless your taste is that way) in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else.

Many people give themselves extreme pains to frequent company where all around them are their superiors, and where, do what you will, you must be subject to continual mortification--( as, for instance, when Marchioness X.forgets you, and you can't help thinking that she cuts you on purpose; when Duchess Z.passes by in her diamonds, etc.).