Quotes & Sayings About Nouveau Riche

Codfish aristocracy' is what they call us. Men who've made a fortune in business, but are common-born."
"Why codfish?"
"It used to refer to the rich merchants who settled the American colonies and made their money in the cod trade. Now it means any successful businessman."
"Nouveau riche is another term," Helen added. "It's never used as a compliment, of course. But it should be. Being self-made is something to be admired." As she felt his soundless chuckle, she insisted, "It is."
Rhys turned his head to kiss her. "You've no need to flatter my vanity."
"I'm not flattering you. I think you're remarkable. — Lisa Kleypas

They were new money, without a doubt: so new it shrieked. Their clothes looked as it they'd covered themselves in glue, then rolled around in hundred-dollar bills. — Margaret Atwood

Floridians have accustomed themselves to this nasty vermin [the cockroach] as just another of the Sunshine State's rogue inhabitants, not so different from its serial killers, native shit-kickers, oblivious tourists, faux-mermaids, cocaine kingpins, moron surfers, nouveau-riche snowbirds, spooky clairvoyants and Jimmy Buffet wanna-be's. — Jon Resh

I have this table in my new house. They put this table in without asking. It was some weird nouveau riche marble table, and I hated it. But it was literally so heavy that it took a crane to move it. We would try to set up different things around it, but it never really worked. I realized that table was my ego. No matter what you put around it, under it, no matter who photographed it, the douchebaggery would always come through. — Kanye West

There is proverbially a mystery among most men of new wealth, how they made their first ten thousand; it is the qualities they showed then, before they became bullies, when every man was someone to be placated, when only hope sustained them and they could count on nothing from the world but what could be charmed from it, that make them, if they survive their triumph, successful with women. — Evelyn Waugh

We must stop calling our drug barons and "419s" (fraudsters) nouveau riche, big shots or those who have made it. — Sunday Adelaja

A big diamond necklace is nouveau riche, really. People who have wealth a long time don't wear such things. — Elsa Peretti

There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all. — Gore Vidal

It's a rented house right along the Mississippi River, a house that screams Suburban Nouveau Riche, the kind of place I aspired to as a kid from my split-level, shag-carpet side of town. The kind of house that is immediately familiar: a generically grand, unchallenging, new, new, new house that my wife would-and did-detest. 'Should I remove my soul before I come inside?' Her first line upon arrival. — Gillian Flynn

It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist. — Saul Bellow

I grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in a nouveau riche world, where money was spent wildly, and I'm still living in one! ... The private schools are all jammed with long waiting lists; the clubs
all the old clubs
are jammed with long waiting lists today; the harbors are clogged with yachts; there has never been a more material society than the one we live in today ... Where is this 'vanished world' they talk about? I don't think the critics have looked out the window! — Louis Auchincloss

The scientific community having made a rapid ascent from deep poverty to great affluence, from academe's cloisters to Washington's high councils, still tends to be a bit excitable - not unlike a nouveau riche in a fluctuating market. — Daniel S. Greenberg

What reader or dreamer doesn't imagine the romantic life of a writer, who lingers between the desk and the fridge in the morning and in the evening attends cocktail parties thrown by nouveaux riches and the society ladies who hardly ever have the time to read? — Rawi Hage

Thank you for making me nouveau riche. — Jerry Della Femina

Domenico had that 'look-at-me I've-got-money' attitude about him. A proper nouveau riche. In combination with his pig-like table manners at home, it was a sight to behold. — K.A. Merikan