the social ladder

The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.

Ascending another step on the social ladder, she took her stand on the platform of patronage, and charitably looked down on me as an object of pity.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost all his acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian names: old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants, and adjutant-generals, so that many of his intimate chums were to be found at the extreme ends of the social ladder, and would have been very much surprised to learn that they had, through the medium of Oblonsky, something in common.

Every one, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place on the social ladder, and is beset by stormy passions and conflicting interests, as in Descartes' theory of pressure and impulsion.

He added that he had always been afraid to propose anything of the sort, because Clara would make an awful row about a step that must damage her matrimonial chances, and his mother could not be expected to like it after clinging for so many years to that step of the social ladder on which retail trade is impossible.

Pick a plucky and discreetly gorgeous heroine who wants to fight her way up the social ladder. Sanditon version: wide-eyed Charlotte Heywood played with pouting perfection by Rose Williams.

And he claimed she kept trading up hubbies because she was "consumed" with climbing the social ladder.

Meghan Markle was recently accused of using people to work her way up the social ladder.

When elites and middle classes wanting to climb further up the social ladder, or arrest their decline, exhort 'the people', the implications are more draconian.

The PBM provides financial assistance to the destitute, widows, orphans, invalids, the infirm and other needy people at the bottom of the social ladder, focusing on educational and medical assistance along with financial aid to charitable institutions.

The Queenmother of Berekum and Kato, Nana Afia Siraa-Ababio III, who chaired the function, also urged women to pursue their individual aspirations and strive to climb the social ladder against any social norms.

In simple terms: At ground zero (in the gutter) and on the bottom rung of the social ladder; it means that, competing in the human race can be, and invariably is, a desperate fight for survival, ie 'dog eat dog'!

As she rises up the social ladder, her old loyal friend Amelia is still mourning George's death and returns to live in poverty with her family.

Vanity Fair ITV, 9pm William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair has been adapted many times before, but there's something about the 1848 novel that keeps drawing viewers in - and a lot of it has to do with the "heroine" Becky Sharp, a woman who is determined to do whatever it takes to escape from poverty and scale the social ladder. It's a journey that takes her to the court of King George IV and the Battle of Waterloo, and this new seven-part adaption will be suitably epic, with a great cast that includes Suranne Jones, Martin Clunes and Michael Palin.