Few of them are granted the dignity of a name, and, for want of anything better to do, they run, sashay, curve around in slow turns, and leave their hands trailing in cool water or warm air.
In 1710, he was granted the dignity of Archtreasurer of the Empire, an office formerly held by the Elector Palatine the absence of the Elector of Bavaria allowed a reshuffling of offices.
Lyautey had been granted the dignity of a Marshal of France in 1921 in recognition of his work in Morocco.
In a way, the tuning system is beside the point: more crucially, the music expresses something elemental about Custer and Sitting Bull, both of whom are granted a measure of dignity.
It's very difficult to imagine someone today writing a novel in which only the Europeans are granted the dignity of names.
Guantánamo: A Novel by Dorothea Dieckmann, translated by Tim Mohr 151pp, Duckworth Overlook, £8.99 It's not until 25 pages into Guantánamo that the trussed-up, abused body with whose agonies and discomforts we've become intimately familiar is finally granted the dignity of a name.
Unlike those murderous fashion houses with blood all over their claw-like hands (okay, that might be a bit rich), the little critters in Julia Black's Abattoir are granted the dignity of a natural death.
From the outset, the couple's blithely unmotivated, slightly kooky curiosity marks them as clueless American tourists of the hipster variety, and Loktev never grants them the dignity of idiosyncrasy.
Despite this, Brookwood's pauper graves granted more dignity to the deceased than did other graveyards and cemeteries of the period, all of which other than Brookwood continued the practice of mass graves for the poor.
This notion, sometimes granted the unwarranted dignity of being called a theory, is hardly new.
