Purpose
These houses were status symbols for the great families of England, generally headed by great statesmen, who competed with each other to provide suitably grand settings in which to entertain members of the royal family. They were also the settings where affairs of state and party political matters were discussed informally among the ruling elite. They are termed the "seat" of their owner if he bears a title of nobility, the implication being the seat of a political powerbase, as was the true seat on the benches in the House of Lords where he had a right to sit and help determine the political destiny of the nation.
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Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“For the purpose of knowledge, one must know how to use that inner current that draws us to a thing, and then the one that, after a time, draws us away from it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice—is often the means of their regeneration.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)