What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.

"Snobbery" is here used without disrespect, as a convenient term to denote the element of strain involved in the quest for gentility on the part of persons whose accustomed social standing is less high or less authentic than their aspirations.

There are two kinds of snobbishness: One is that of the man who has had a good many opportunities and looks down on those who lack them. The other is rarely understood, that of the self-made man who glories in his success in overcoming difficulties and admires greatly people who have achieved the things he considers of importance.

"the word "snobbery" came into use for the first time in England during 1820s. It was said to have derived from the habit of many Oxford and Cambridge colleges of writing sine nobilitate (without nobility) , or "s.nob", next to the names of the ordinary students on examinations lists in order to distinguish them from their aristocratic peers. In the word's earliest days, a snob was taken to mean someone without high status, but it quickly assumed its modern and almost diametrically opposed meaning: someone offended by a lack of high status in others, a person who believes in a flawless equations between social rank and human worth"

He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob.

That which we call a Snob, by any other name would still be Snobbish.

Now, there are in our civic and social life very much worse creatures than snobs, but none more contemptible. [...] If you have any stuff in you at all, and try to amount to anything in after life, you will not remain snobs even if you start as such. It will be taken out of you very soon and very roughly if you go into any real work. Go into politics, go to your district convention, and try to carry it on the snob basis and see how far you will get. The thing that will strike you in just about a week is that there are a whole lot of able people sliding around this planet. The fact that the individual opposed to you does not wear a cravat, and does wear a saw-edge collar, does not imply that you are going to carry the convention against him!

It is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

You act as if you know more than I'll ever know, but I've forgotten more than you'll ever know. You're snobs, too. Every man I've ever met has been a snob. You don't have to be a snob, too, do you? Please sign this piece of paper, so I can be a member of the public library and read books and find out about people. I don't want to hate you, I just can't help it.

The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.

You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob.

But the snobs are ever with us, snobs of art, of place, of pelf.
And, reading this, I rather think I might be one myself.

Snobbery works in both directions — if you’re rich, thinking you’re better than those who aren’t is as equally lame as being broke and thinking you’re better than those who are rich.