What are bourgeois?

Famous quotes containing the word bourgeois:

    Look a here people, listen to me,
    Don’t try to find no home in Washington, D.C.
    Lord, it’s a bourgeois town, it’s a bourgeois town.
    Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter (1889–1949)

    The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.
    Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)

    I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me—a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn’t dignified doesn’t worry me.
    —E.M. (Edward Morgan)