Kind hearts are more than coronets / And simple faith than Norman blood.

These lines come from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Lady Clara Vere de Vere” (first published in 1842), a dramatic lyric in which a speaker rebukes an aristocratic young woman for pride and cruelty toward a social inferior. Written in the early Victorian period—an era preoccupied with class hierarchy, inherited privilege, and moral “respectability”—the poem contrasts noble birth with moral worth. Tennyson, himself closely connected to elite circles yet attentive to social conscience in his poetry, uses the language of heraldry (“coronets”) and lineage (“Norman blood”) to critique the assumption that rank guarantees virtue.

The couplet asserts that ethical character outweighs inherited status: compassion (“kind hearts”) is superior to aristocratic titles (“coronets”), and sincere belief (“simple faith”) is worth more than prestigious ancestry (“Norman blood,” evoking the Norman Conquest and England’s ruling lineage). Tennyson’s antithesis turns the symbols of nobility into empty ornaments when unaccompanied by humanity. The lines have endured because they compress a democratic moral principle into memorable, balanced phrasing—suggesting that true nobility is measured by conduct and inner integrity rather than pedigree.