Gentleman Quotes - Page 31

• The bible teaches that a father may sell his daughter for a slave, that he may sacrifice her purity to a mob, and that he may murder her, and still be a good father and a holy man. It teaches that a man may have any number of wives; that he may sell them, give them away, or swap them around, and still be a perfect gentleman, a good husband, a righteous man, and one of God's most intimate friends; and that is a pretty good position for a beginning.

  Helen H. Gardener

  Daughter, Husband, Father

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• When certain unmarried men, who had lost their capacity to sin, sat indoors, breathing bad air, and passed resolutions about what was right and what wrong, making rules for the guidance of the people, instead of trusting to the natural, happy instincts of the individual, they ushered in the Dark Ages. These are the gentlemen who blocked human evolution absolutely for a thousand years.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Dark, Men, Air

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• Ladies and gentlemen, the great number seven, Mickey Mantle.

  Mel Allen

  Baseball, Numbers, Seven

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• Stay out of the gentlemen's clubs. Get a lot of rest. Just have fun and relax and stay focused.

  Shaquille O'Neal

  Basketball, Fun, Winning

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• Be a gentleman farmer.

  Juvenal

  Farmers

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• It has been said that true religion will make a man a more thorough gentleman than all the courts in Europe. And it is true that you may see simple laboring men as thorough gentlemen as any duke, simply because they have learned to fear God; and, fearing him, to restrain themselves, which is the very root and essence of all good breeding.

  Charles Kingsley

  Simple, Men, Europe

  Charles Kingsley (2008). “The Gospel of the Pentateuch: A Set of Parish Sermons: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.59, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• After all, there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose class no dirt or rags can hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the gentleman--by whom I do not mean just now the rich--have the superiority in that point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air, water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this "haggardness," this "coarseness" (etc., for the list is too long to specify), be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people.

  Charles Kingsley

  Mean, Exercise, Men

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• Fashion, leader of a chatt'ring train,
  Whom man for his own hurt permits to reign
  Who shifts and changes all things but his shape,
  And would degrade her vot'ry to an ape,
  The fruitful parent of abuse and wrong,
  Holds a usurp'd dominion o'er his tongue,
  There sits and prompts him with his own disgrace,
  Prescribes the theme, the tone, and the grimace,
  And when accomplish'd in her wayward school,
  Calls gentleman whom she has made a fool.

  William Cowper

  Fashion, Hurt, School

  William Cowper (1837). “Poems; to which is prefixed a memoir of the author by J. M'Diarmid”, p.217

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• An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.

  Henry Fielding

  Book, Giving, Ordinary

  Henry Fielding (1861). “Tom Jones”, p.51

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• The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Country, Character, People

  Oliver Goldsmith (1834). “An inquiry into the present state of polite learning. The Bee. History of Cyrillo Padovano. Life of Dr. Parnell. Life of Lord Bolingbroke. Prefaces and introductions”, p.77

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• Gentlemen ... Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman?

  Susan B. Anthony

  Teacher, Men, Doctors

  Lynn Sherr, Susan B. Anthony (1995). “Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words”, Crown

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• a true gentleman ... was characterized as the man that asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into home-like in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more agreeable.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Family, Home, Men

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• Femininity and masculinity are social constructs. Female and male are biological. We don't have to learn to be men or women but we do have to learn to be ladies and gentlemen.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Men, Males, Female

  Rita Mae Brown (2009). “Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser”, p.232, Bantam

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• Every child was taught from his cradle that money was Mammon, the chief agent of the flesh and the devil. As he grew up it was his duty as a Christian and a gentleman to appear to despise filthy lucre, whatever his secret opinion of it might be.

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  Christian, Money, Children

  Rebecca Harding Davis (1904). “Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography”, p.23, Vanderbilt University Press

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• Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.

  Edmund Burke

  Mean, Civilization, Two

  Edmund Burke, Robert MONTGOMERY (Author of “Satan.”.) (1853). “Edmund Burke: being first principles selected from his writings. With an introductory essay by Robert Montgomery”, p.127

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• A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies; one may say simply "fineness of nature.

  John Ruskin

  Mind, Firsts, Body

  John Ruskin (1868). “pt. VI: Of leaf beauty. pt. VII: Of cloud beauty. pts. VIII-IX: Of ideas of relation”, p.278

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• Courage, so far as it is a sign of race, is peculiarly the mark of a gentleman or a lady; but it becomes vulgar if rude or insensitive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a characteristic of race or fineness of make. A fawn is not vulgar in being timid, nor a crocodile "gentle" because courageous.

  John Ruskin

  Courage, Race, Rude

  John Ruskin (1869). “Modern Painters: pt. 6. Of leaf beauty. pt. 7. Of cloud beauty. pt. 8-9. Of ideas of relation: Of invention formal. Of invention spiritual”, p.288

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• Ladies and gentlemen, after what I've been through, I am happy just to be wearing clothes that open in the front.

  David Letterman

  Health, Clothes, Fronts

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• Gentlemen use books as Gentlewomen handle their flowers, who in the morning stick them in their heads, and at night strawe them at their heeles.

  John Lyly

  Morning, Flower, Book

  "John Lyly, 'Euphues, To the Gentlemen Readers'". Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations V2: Drawn From The Speech And Literature Of All Nations, Ancient And Modern (1922), Book by Kate Louise Roberts, 2010.

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• Precedents are the disgrace of legislation. They are not wanted to justify right measures, are absolutely insufficient to excuse wrong ones. They can only be useful to heralds, dancing masters, and gentlemen ushers.

  Laurence Sterne

  Dancing, Excuse, Legislation

  Richard Griffith, Laurence Sterne (1794). “The Posthumous Works of Laurence Sterne: ...”

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• I think all these reverend gentlemen who insist on the word 'obey' in the marriage service should be removed for a clear violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, which says there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude within the United States.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Marriage, Thinking, United States

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (2016). “Elizabeth Cady Stanton: As Revealed in Her Letters & Diary (Abridged)”, p.169, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word, and the incorruptibility of his principles. He is the descendent of the knight, the crusader; he is the defender of the defenseless and the champion of justice--or he is not a gentleman.

  Emily Post

  Knights, Justice, Champion

  Emily Post (1922). “Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home”

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• He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.

  Denis Diderot

  Men, He Man

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• Ladies and gentlemen, you can't please everyone. Take my girlfriend - I think she's the most remarkable woman in the world. . . . That's me . . . But to my wife . . .

  Jackie Mason

  Girlfriend, Thinking, Wife

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• Lords, knights and gentlemen, what I should say
  My tears gainsay; for every word I speak,
  Ye see I drink the water of my eye.

  William Shakespeare

  Eye, Knights, Water

  William Shakespeare (1807). “The plays of William Shakspeare, with the corrections and illustr. of various commentators, to which are added notes by S. Johnson and G. Steevens, revised and augmented by I. Reed, with a glossarial index”, p.416

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