"Gentility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but I know no other word to express my meaning—that low ambition which sets every one on the look-out to succeed and to rise in life, to amass money, to gain power, to depress his rivals, to triumph over his hitherto superiors, to affect a consequence and a gentility which he had not before, to affect to have an opinion on high subjects, to pretend to form a judgment upon sacred things, to choose his religion, to approve and condemn according to his taste, to become a partizan in extensive measures ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... degree of honor as well as to a reasonable pitch of prosperity. It was, from the younger Guion's point of view, an agreeable practice, concerned chiefly with the care of trust funds, in which a gentleman could engage without any rough-and-tumble loss of gentility. It required little or nothing in the way of pleadings in the courts or disputing in the market-place, and—especially during the lifetime of the elder partners—left him leisure for cultivating that graceful relationship to life for ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... between us than workmen and employer and employer's friend. So Berta and Mr. Julian, if you'll go on and take no more notice o' us, in case of visitors, it would be wiser—else, perhaps, if we should be found out intimate with ye, and bring down your gentility, you'll blame us for it. I get as nervous as a cat when I think I may be the cause of ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... was dressed after the fashion of shabby gentility, a fashion which the rich not seldom try to copy. He wore low shoes beneath gaiters of the pattern worn by the Imperial Guard, doubtless for the sake of economy, because they kept the socks clean. The rusty tinge of his black breeches, like the cut and the white or shiny line of ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... has made some approach To gentility, now that he's stretched in a coach! He's taking a drive in his carriage at last! But it will not be long, if he goes on so fast: Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper whom ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... you do not so; for then you stray from the steps of gentility; the fashion among them is to marry first, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... that claims a superiority of class, and the obsequiousness that loves a lord, all this Nietschean "pathos of distance," whether felt from the heights or the depths, is sharply repugnant to a new gentility, that embraces all that have had the joy of promiscuous social intercourse. From this aristocracy no one is excluded that does not exclude himself through servility or superciliousness. Its distinction is liberality, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... brawlingly rude and vulgar, like the coarser set of his own countrymen, with whom he had occasionally been brought in contact, he was so manifestly uncivilized in many material points, as to put his claim to gentility much beyond a cavil, and that in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and ascetic Dora. Her ideal of living Was filled in with images and desires abundantly derived from Manchester life, where every day she saw people grow rich rapidly, and rise as a matter of course into that upper region of gentility, carriages, servants, wines, and grouse-moors, whither, ever since it had become plain to her that David could, if he chose, easily place her there, it had been her constant craving to go. Other people came to be gentlefolks and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mistress speak of you." Hillyard knew enough of maids to understand that "mistress" was an unusual word with them. Here, it seemed, was a paragon of maids, who was quite content to be publicly Stella Croyle's maid, whose gentility suffered no offence by the recognition of ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... other hand, there is hardly any one whose position is so fixed, that he may not easily rise above or fall below it, and hence there is constant room for social ambition, social disappointment, and social jealousy. Again, the broad line of gentility, which now corresponds most closely with the old distinction of nobility, is determined by such a number of considerations,—birth, connexions, means, manners, education, with the arbitrary, though almost essential, condition of ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... any longer. I never thought about ceremony and gentility, any more than about the possible dangers, known and unknown, which I might be running. I opened the door and ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... face. A mass of unkempt iron-gray hair fell about his sharp features, further hidden by a grizzly beard. His black frock coat had once adorned the distinguished and ample person of a Northern senator; it was wrinkled dismally about Demming's bones, while its soiled gentility was a queer contrast to his nether garments of ragged butternut, his coarse boots, and an utterly disreputable hat, through a hole of which a tuft of hair had made its way, and waved plume-wise in the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... Hardy Vaux, in 1812, and published at the end of his Memoirs, 1819, ii. 149-227, a kiddy, or "flash-kiddy," is a thief of the lower orders, who, when he is breeched by a course of successful depredation dresses in the extreme of vulgar gentility, and affects a knowingness in his air and conversation. A "swell" or "rank swell" ("real swell" appears in Egan's Life in London) is the more recent "toff;" and "flash" is "fly," "down," or "awake," i.e. knowing, not easily ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... library he would gather for himself. And it should be in no wise for show—the gross ostentation of the unlettered parvenu—but a genuine library, which should minister to his own individual culture. The thought took instant hold upon his interest. By that road, his progress to the goal of gentility would be smooth and simple. He seemed not to have reasoned it out to himself in detail before, but now, at all events, he saw his way clearly enough. Why should he be tormented with doubts and misgivings about himself, as if he had come ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... them among the "Yankee" traders of the North. A claim of that sort is likely to be aggressively made by those who have least title to make it, and, as strife between North and South grew hotter, the gentility of the latter infected with additional vulgarity the political controversy of private life and even of Congress. But, as observant Northerners were quite aware, these pretensions had a foundation of fact. An Englishman, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... sons are coming on, and it too often happens that the brief period of sunshine and prosperity has done its evil work with them too. They have imbibed ideas of gentility and desire for excitement utterly foreign to the quiet, peaceful life of an agriculturist. They have gambled on the turf and become involved. Notwithstanding the fall of their father from his good position, they still retain the belief that in the end they shall find enough money ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... my new projects. He implored me to put them from me; he drew such pictures of the power of the English traders, you would have thought them the prince merchants of Venice; he saw all his hard-won gentility gone at a blow, and himself an outcast precluded for ever from great men's recognition. He could not bear it, and though he was loyal to my uncle's firm in his own way, he sought a change. One day he announced that he had been offered a post as steward to a big ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... is, the younger members; Aunt Elsie, Mrs. Lawson, and I walked soberly along. Then we popped into separate bathing houses, still looking like respectable and responsible members of society, and popped out five minutes afterward—scarecrows! spooks! animated rag-bags! with the last vestige of our gentility ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... never heard of them in Scotland until after the Restoration, otherwise than as persons of family. At that period there are traces of their having been fined by public authority, but not for any ordinary criminal offence. From this time forward I find no trace of their gentility. During the eighteenth century they are, I think, principally traced by a line of maltsters (no doubt a small business then) in Lanarkshire. Their names are recorded on tombstones in the churchyard of Biggar. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the people. She refused to listen when he talked in the dialect. She made him dress with opulence, and even with tidiness; she made him buy a fashionable house and fill it with fine furniture; she made him buy a brougham in which her gentility could pay calls and do shopping (she shopped in Oldcastle, where a decrepit aristocracy of tradesmen sneered at Hanbridge's lack of style); she had her 'day'; she taught the servants to enter the reception-rooms without knocking; she took tea in bed in the ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... this phase of the subject is a consideration of those who are worried lest in word or action, they fail in gentility. They are afraid to do anything lest it should not be regarded as genteel. When they shake hands, it must be done not so much with hearty, friendly spontaneity, but with gentility, and you wonder what that faint touch of fingers, reached high in air, means. They would be mortified beyond ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... paused, and, with a countenance of undisturbed sobriety, emptied his ninth mug. In justice, however, to the good man, this pattern of old-fashioned gentility, it must be borne in mind, that the mug was a Dutch mug, and consequently a small one (as indeed are all things Dutch, from clocks to cheeses); and also that, small as it was, he never more than half filled it, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... refused the summons of the parliamentarian colonel, Okey, by whom it Was invested; but it was speedily taken, when sad havoc was committed by the soldiery, all the armorial bearings, and every symbol of rank and gentility, being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... and my journals have never been written up, save in chance scraps. The Wanderer is quite as interesting as ever! I took the odds to L2 with him over a race run at Newmarket, and he paid promptly. He puts out little signs of improvement—sprouts of gentility—at times: but one heavy spell of gin and Shakespeare takes him back to the old level again. Still, he is more amusing than the dandies; in fact, I do not think I shall go amongst the respectable division again. I make no pretence of immolating ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... gossip of the day. They were rich and fashionable, perfect in etiquette, costume, and most particular in their society; but the rank and position of the noble Lady de Tilly made her friendship most desirable, as it conferred in the eyes of the world a patent of gentility which held good against ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was hidden by lines of cars drawn up slantwise at an angle of ninety. No farmer wagons. A small town with all the airs of a big one; with none of the charming informality of the old Southern small town; none of the engaging ruggedness of the established Middle-Western town; none of the faded gentility of the old New England town. A strident dame, this, in red satin and diamonds, insisting that she is a lady. Interesting, withal, and bulging with ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... was a dismal spot, nevertheless, with not even an air of faded gentility to recommend it. It seemed to have no better days behind it, nor to hold within itself the possibility of any future improvement. It was narrow, and extended only the length of a city block, yet it was by no means wanting in many of those luxuries which mark this era of modern ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... costume, the scarlet cloak and little round cap of Lincoln green, the puffed and ruffled sleeves, the petticoat of green-drugget cloth, the high heeled leather shoes, with their green ribbon bows, and the riding mask of black velvet which Debby remembered to have heard, only ladies of the highest gentility wore."[129] ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... just going to speak to Lizzie Osborn, and Sophy ran after her to a house of about the same degree as their own, but dignified as Mount Lodge, because it stood on the hill side of the street, while Mr. Kendal's house was for more gentility called 'Willow Lawn.' Gilbert was not to be found; but at four o'clock the whole party met at dinner, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... varied by the appearance of a beggar-woman, got up in great decency, and with a wonderful air of pinched and faded gentility. She wears an old shawl upon her head, but it is as nicely folded as an aristocratic mantilla; her feet are cased in the linen slippers worn by the poorer classes, but there are no unsavory rags and dirt about her. "That good walk of yours, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... enthusiasm. It compelled a certain measure of her difficult respect, especially when she beheld him worm his truck through crowded River Street with a supreme disregard for the imminent catastrophe—which somehow never ensued. But it lacked gentility. At twenty-eight Winona was not only perfected in the grammar of morals, more than ever alert for infractions of the merely social code, but her ideals of refinement and elegance had become more demanding. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... necessity of giving strong blows to the audience, that I have never seen a player in this character, who did not exaggerate and strain to the utmost these ambiguous features,—these temporary deformities in the character. They make him express a vulgar scorn at Polonius which utterly degrades his gentility, and which no explanation can render palatable; they make him show contempt, and curl up the nose at Ophelia's father,—contempt in its very grossest and most hateful form; but they get applause by it: it is natural, people say; that is, the words are scornful, and the actor expresses scorn, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... is perhaps a 'swell' out at elbows, a seedy and somewhat ragged remnant of a very questionable kind of gentility—a gentility engendered in 'coal-holes' and 'cider-cellars,' in 'shades,' and such-like midnight 'kens'—suckled with brandy and water and port-wine negus, and fed with deviled kidneys and toasted cheese. He has run to the end of his tether, is cleaned ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... wrapped up between the broad-gauge and the narrow-gauge, like a hare in a bottle-spit. The opening of the line to Rugby affords a new short way to London. The population will henceforward increase at the expense of its gentility, but the police and sanitary arrangements before alluded to, will always make Leamington a favourite with ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... flunkeyism and servility, while operating as a restraint upon the manly expression of opinion. It fosters a spirit of spurious aristocracy, which shows itself in contempt for men who prefer honest industry to place-hunting and insolvent gentility. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Hetty, I will pitch you into the canal, and die of sorrow for my lost love afterwards. You know what I am, according to the conventional description: a gentleman with lots of money. Do you know the wicked origin of that money and gentility?" ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... doe speake English When I'de move pittie; when dissemble, Irish; Dutch when I reele; and tho I feed on scalions If I should brag Gentility I'de gabble Welch.' ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... her son, though careless and lazy, and given to little thefts and large stories, had his good points, as what Irish boy has not. So they, the Mac Donnels, sought out some other home,—safer and more comfortable, if not quite so grand in its isolated, ancient gentility,—and it may be, took the Banshee with them for their comfort. Trouble, I believe, always goes with people in this world, wherever they move to,—in some form or other, it travels with them, and settles down with them,—as ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... He reiterated so often he was an officer and a gentleman, that finally the American major in command at Misamis mildly replied that self-appointed colonels in self-appointed armies were not recognized by any government, and as for his gentility, if it were the genuine article and not a veneer like his title, it would certainly stand the strain of a little honest labour. The arguments were cogent, and the hand of the law more irresistible still, so the high ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... was very polite to ladies, and he knew their ways. He seldom advanced without an offering of some lovely flower or a small sprig of sweetly-scented herb, which he invariably presented with a graceful bow and a smile intended to represent a combination of humility, amiability, gentility, and as many other "ilitys" as could be squeezed into his expressive features. It is hardly necessary after this description to say that Iiani was a very tall humbug, pleasant in manner when he had his own way. He was lazy to such a degree ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... taken prisoner and lost his life afterwards, only by staying to put on a band and adjust his periwig. He would escape like a person of quality, or not at all, and died the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility. I think your counsel of festina lente is as ill to a man who is flying from the world, as it would have been to that unfortunate well-bred gentleman, who was so cautious as not to fly undecently from his enemies, and therefore I prefer Horace's ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... number of great families with which it has been associated Chester has been named "the mother and nurse of English gentility." Of the eight baronies of the earldom none survives, but the title of that of Kinderton was bestowed in 1762 on George Venables-Vernon, son of Anne, sister of Peter Venables, last baron of Kinderton, from whom the present ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... and Smith sent back a demand for "rather thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees' roots, well provided, than a thousand of such as we have." There spoke the genuine pioneer, whose heart is in his work, and who can postpone "gentility" until it grows indigenously out of the soil. The Company at home were indignant that their colony had not ere now reimbursed them for their expenditure, and much more; and they sent word that unless profits were forthcoming forthwith ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... very next house to this is another family of not nearly so small property. They too profess great love of and desire for education; but there is no corresponding effort. They must dress with a certain degree of gentility, and they must not make an effort to earn money by any means that would seem to lower their standing in society; and, moreover, they are indolent, and the effort that the denial of physical indulgences requires seems insupportable to them. The parents of this family will often ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... proposing for her hand because, in a few years, she would benefit by her uncle's will. Such a suggestion was not only unworthy of her—it was an unforgivable thing to say to him. He had always treated her with the greatest courtesy and consideration, and because he did not flaunt his gentility before her, she had taken unwarranted umbrage and had said something that raised ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... to cultivate the land undisturbed, disdaining newfangled ideas of gentility, and adhering in all ways to the customs of his father. Presently, soldier and farmer also passed away, and were laid to rest side by side on the banks of the Youle, in the ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... who have nothing to show for their honesty but their money, nothing for their religion but their dissembling, or a fat benefice, nothing for their wit but their dressing, for their nobility but their title, for their gentility but their sword, for their courage but their huffing, for their preferment but their assurance, for their learning but their degrees, or for their gravity but their wrinkles or dulness. They had better laugh at one another here, as it is the custom of the world. Laughing is ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... eastward and accomplished in the span of one short cross-town block a transit of the most violent contrasts, from the dull dignity of the socially eligible, if somewhat passe, through a stratum of shabby gentility, to a region of late years dedicated to the uses ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... extraordinary and unceremonious demand the knight flushed angrily, frowned, made an expressive gesture with his lips and his nose which suggestively indicated that there was something offensive in the air between the wind and his gentility, ending the pantomime by finding a pass and handing it over to his "nigger," then—not deigning to speak—motioned him and it to the threatening figure. As this black man came forward, Brooks, looking at him a moment, cried excitedly, ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Paris looked very shabby to one who remembered her in former days with her clean streets and many-fountained parks. She wore the air of shabby gentility. The streets were not clean; the people were not well-dressed, the fountains no longer played. France had been hard hit by the war, and the ruin and desolation of her eastern borders were reflected in the metropolis. I spent most of my time in Paris trying to keep men straight, ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... successive epochs, and greatly defaced at the knees by the humiliations of the wearer before his lady-love—in short, we were a living epitome of defunct fashions, and the very raggedest presentment of men who had seen better days. It was gentility in tatters. Often retaining a scholarlike or clerical air, you might have taken us for the denizens of Grub street, intent on getting a comfortable livelihood by agricultural labor; or, Coleridge's projected Pantisocracy in full experiment; or Candide and his motley associates, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... were university trained. Their work, in strong contrast with Jonson's, is intensely romantic, and in it all, however coarse or brutal the scene, there is still, as Emerson pointed out, the subtle "recognition of gentility." ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... order and impossible; that no one was allowed inside the inner precincts or had ever been there; and hinted, incidentally, that we must be mad. K—— listened to all this in that insulting silence which is a sure sign of gentility, and then, ransacking his pockets, brought out a letter and handed it to our man. That produced a change which might have been highly amusing at other times. There was the complete volte-face which amuses. The officer suddenly saluted, clicked his heels, and said in a silky way, like a cat ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... proposed to go at once to the houses of others long suspected of like cruelties to their slaves. But against this the highest gentility of the city alertly and diligently opposed themselves. Not at all because of sympathy with such cruelties. The single reason has its parallel in our own day. It was the fear that the negroes would be thereby encouraged ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... line of patrician dwellings, Great Queen Street, where Shaftesbury's house may still be seen; Lincoln's Inn Fields, where, in the time of George II, the Duke of Newcastle held his levee of office-seekers, and Russell Square, now reduced to a sort of dowager gentility. Hereditary mansions, too ancient and magnificent to be deserted, such as Norfolk House, Spencer House and Lansdowne House, stayed the westward course of aristocracy at St. James's Square and Street, Piccadilly, and Mayfair; but the general tide of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... dressmaker. A very bad one certainly, but still she could gore a skirt. She was not a native of the village, and signified her superior gentility by a mincing pronunciation. She had also a hiss with the sibilants peculiar to herself. Before I could remonstrate, Jack was knocking ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... like grocers' bills—item the fairy king, item the queen. Instead of this they have caught the very voice of the people, the very pulse of life, each giving what was most noticed in his day. Croker and Lover, full of the ideas of harum-scarum Irish gentility, saw everything humorised. The impulse of the Irish literature of their time came from a class that did not—mainly for political reasons—take the populace seriously, and imagined the country as a humorist's Arcadia; ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... a thorough gentleman, through and through, courteous, well-bred, and with an entirely sufficient sense of his own dignity. But he had little respect for any false notions of gentility, and had a habit of going straight at any difficulty himself. To this habit he owed much of his success in life. A very amusing story was told by Mrs. Washburn long after her husband's death. She was one of the brightest and sprightliest and wittiest ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... not young or good-looking, enters the box with her head bound up. Her lord and master confronts her in the dock. It is the "old, old story." A drop of drink yesterday—the day of the Great Nativity, never forget—series of "drops of drink" all day long; and, at five o'clock, just when gentility was beginning to think of dinner, the kitchen poker was used with frightful effect. A triangular cut over the right eye, and another in the dangerous neighbourhood of the left ear, administered with that symbol of domestic bliss, the kitchen poker, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... form was sometimes to be seen; the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing but that and their benchership in common. In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry a staunch tory. Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out—for Coventry had a rough spinous ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the hearts and minds of the French people. Enterprise was deadened, invention crippled. Honesty was nothing, honor everything. Life was of little value. Labor was the badge of servility; laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. The serf-owning spirit was an iron wall between noble and not noble—the only unyielding wall between France and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... was the daughter of a reduced tradesman; she had high notions of gentility, but possessed more vanity and love of admiration than good sense. Neither of them could comprehend the true relation of parents. If they fed their children well, clothed them well, and sent them to the most reputable schools, they imagined ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... always welcome to the grandest circle of visitors in the house. He might lunch with a duke any day that he chose; given that a duke was forthcoming at the Towers. His accent was Scotch, not provincial. He had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones; and leanness goes a great way to gentility. His complexion was sallow, and his hair black; in those days, the decade after the conclusion of the great continental war, to be sallow and black-a-vised was of itself a distinction;' he was not jovial (as my lord remarked ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... operating at present as great a revolution in the social, as was effected in '98 in the political condition of France. All along the road from Calais to Paris, she sees nothing but "youths galloping their horses in the cavalry costume of Hyde Park," "smart gigs and natty dennets," "cottages of gentility, with white walls and green shutters, and neat offices, rivalling the diversified orders of the Wyatvilles of Islington and Highgate," in short, nothing but "English neatness and propriety on every side," with one terrible exception, however, "an Irish jaunting car!" of which she chanced, to ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... and mansions, the intermarriages of the Dutch aristocracy, and the subject of heraldry. Mr. Schoonmaker made a hobby of old Bibles, and Mrs. Schoonmaker of old lace. The two hobbies combined gave a mingled air of erudition and gentility to the pair that was quite impressive, while their unquestionably good descent was a source of social capital to all of humbler origin who were fortunate enough to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Shepherd's Bush and Notting Hill. There it is that the Gipsy encampment may be found, squatting within an hour's walk of the Royal palaces and of the luxurious town mansions of our nobility and opulent classes, to the very west of the fashionable West-end, beyond the gentility of Bayswater and Whiteley's avenue of universal shopping. It is a curious spectacle in that situation, and might suggest a few serious reflections upon social contrasts at the centre and capital of the mighty British nation, which takes upon itself the correction of every savage ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... was at right angles to the shore, running up the valley of the Avon; but it soon ceased to be fishy, and became agricultural, owning a few cottages of very humble gentility, which were wont to hang out boards to attract lodgers of small means. At one of these Grace rang, and obtained admittance to a parlour with crazy French windows opening on a little strip of garden. In a large wheeled chair, between the fire and the window, surrounded by ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hastily; "but others may find out how you live here. This is not fit work for you. You seem to be a—a gentleman. You ought to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or in a bank," she continued timidly, with a vague enumeration of the prevailing degrees of local gentility. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... 'Why, thy gentility shall survive it,' Throckmorton said. 'But an it will not have more beating to its back, ye shall tell me where ye left ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... subject his meager resources to the least strain possible, Dennis at last succeeded in securing, in one of the more pretentious stores on Baxter Street, a contrivance for the relief of penury and threadbare gentility known at that time by the name ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... one, to George Eliot. For we have not only survived that present which Thackeray described: we have even survived that future to which George Eliot looked forward. It is no longer adequate to say that Dickens did not understand that old world of gentility, of parliamentary politeness and the balance of the constitution. That world is rapidly ceasing to understand itself. It is vain to repeat the complaint of the old Quarterly Reviewers, that Dickens ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... Colonel Jack was with his gold. If it would have settled the matter to put it in the fire yesterday, I should certainly have done it. Your opinion is requested. I think I shall have grounds for a very good speech at Brummagem; but I am not sure about Liverpool: having misgivings of over-gentility." My opinion was clearly for sending the money back, which ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... built and afterward inhabited for a term of years by one of the city fathers, a well-known and still widely remembered merchant. No unusual manifestations had marked it during his occupancy. Not till it had run to seed and been the home of decaying gentility, and later of actual poverty, did it acquire a name which made it difficult to rent, though the neighborhood was a growing one and the house itself well-enough built to make it a desirable residence. Those who had been induced to try living within its spacious walls invariably left at the ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... conceded equality of social condition. The army was then, as I believe it is considered now, the surest sign of higher caste in a democracy. Wesley, by the mere right to epaulets, would be of the acknowledged gentility. Nobody could sneer at him; no doors could be opened grudgingly when he called. He would, in virtue of his West Point insignia, be a knighted member of the blood royal of the republic. Some of this mysterious unction would distill itself into ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... and for a short time Lady Duberly. She assumes quite the airs and ton of gentility, and tells her husband "as he is a pear, he ought to behave ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... which I passed had the same air of departed gentility and sluttish housekeeping. The once rich curtains were faded and dusty; the furniture greased and tarnished. On entering the dining-room I found a number of odd, vulgar-looking, rustic gentlemen seated round a table, on which were bottles, decanters, tankards, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... to the organ are both numerous and interesting, and it is pretty evident that this instrument had a great attraction for Dickens. The gentle Tom Pinch (M.C.), whom Gissing calls 'a gentleman who derives his patent of gentility direct from God Almighty,' first claims our attention. He used to play the organ at the village church 'for nothing.' It was a simple instrument, 'the sweetest little organ you ever heard,' provided with wind by the action of ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... Yet will the fire as fair and lighte brenne* *burn As twenty thousand men might it behold; *Its office natural aye will it hold,* *it will perform its On peril of my life, till that it die. natural duty* Here may ye see well how that gentery* *gentility, nobility Is not annexed to possession, Since folk do not their operation Alway, as doth the fire, lo, *in its kind* *from its very nature* For, God it wot, men may full often find A lorde's son do shame and villainy. And he that will have price* of his gent'ry, *esteem, honour For* he was boren ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Rooms. In the 'First Class' you find quite a collection of shabby gentility. And you'd never believe what a lot you can get ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... to her beauty that it was impossible and out of nature—or I thought so—to separate them from her beauty. Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood,—from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe,—from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... extensive cod-fishing and even whaling enterprises. Its harbor has suffered since; the rails too have gone through to Spain, and St. Jean is left mildly and interestingly mournful, in its lessened power, its decayed gentility. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... young lady, and of her father's dead body. Mannering now found his further interference would be unnecessary, and might be misconstrued. He observed, too, that several families connected with that of Ellangowan, and who indeed derived their principal claim of gentility from the alliance, were now disposed to pay to their trees of genealogy a tribute, which the adversity of their supposed relatives had been inadequate to call forth; and that the honour of superintending the funeral rites of the dead Godfrey Bertram (as in the memorable ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... of a life of depression and enervation as their result; or else that class of poetry, plays, &c., of which the foundation is feudalism, with its ideas of lords and ladies, its imported standard of gentility, and the manners of European high-life-below-stairs in every line and verse." Thus incited to poetic self-expression, Whitman (adds Mr. Conway) "wrote on a sheet of paper, in large letters, these words, 'Make the Work,' and fixed it above his table, where he could always ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... unbearable in the impertinent equality with which they treat people. For, in short, there ought to be a certain subordination in things; and what puts me out of all patience is that a town upstart, whether with two days' gentility to boast of or with two hundred years', should have impudence enough to say that he is as much of a gentleman as my late husband, who lived in the country, kept a pack of hounds, and took the title of Count in all the deeds ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere
... cities man college settlements, day and night seek in every way and by all means to arouse and perpetuate the highest Christian ideals. Added to these are intellectual training, musical culture and a spirit of true gentility. The student body honors scholarship, awakens ambitions, cultivates good manners, frowns upon untidyness of appearance, while by firmly sustained legislation the faculty forbids any display of extravagance ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... Mistress Elliott," said she, and hostility and gentility were nicely mingled in her tones. "A fine day, mem," the laird's wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the while her plumage - setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The GENTILITY-MONGERS, on the contrary, are positively noxious to society, as well particular as general. There is a twofold or threefold iniquity in their goings-on; they sin against society, their families, and themselves; the whole business of their lives is a perversion of the text of Scripture, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... having on a previous occasion rescued another woman by blacking the eyes of six gamekeepers, who had been set upon her by some noble lord or another. Then, while the ale sparkles with a richer colour as the evening lights grow deeper, the talk gets naturally upon “lords” in general, gentility nonsense, and “hoity-toityism” as the canker at the ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... contention, among them. The same number in our own land could not have played together for the space of an hour without biting or scratching one another. There you might have seen a throng of young females, not filled with envyings of each other's charms, nor displaying the ridiculous affectations of gentility, nor yet moving in whalebone corsets, like so many automatons, but free, inartificially happy, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... of Philadelphia. These structures, which then wore an air of respectable old age, have been in recent years either totally destroyed or so extensively altered that the serene atmosphere of antiquated gentility no longer lingers about their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... neighboring peoples, we may say that he stands fifth, the Mandya, Manska, Debabon, and Banuon leading, while below him stand without any question the Maggugan and the Mamnua. He has not the height, the proportions, the fairness, nor the gentility of the first three. He lacks the nobility, courage, and intelligence of the fourth,[4] but he maintains his superiority over the Maggugan, whose repellent features, sparse hair, scanty clothing, and low intelligence put him only a little above ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... grow older. Everything about her was irresistible—the soft grey ripple of hair about her brow, the shy girlish eyes, the long delicate hand with the fingers which, in spite of their declared readiness to work, trembled a little, and the voice which spoke the Northern speech with such clear-cut gentility, that the words fell on the ear with a certain cool freshness, like the splash of water in a fountain or the tinkle of a burn flowing over ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... but could not do half so many things well; she was a better romp than any I ever saw in nature[752]. Pritchard[753], in common life, was a vulgar ideot; she would talk of her gownd: but, when she appeared upon the stage, seemed to be inspired by gentility and understanding. I once talked with Colley Cibber[754], and thought him ignorant of the principles of his art. Garrick, Madam, was no declaimer; there was not one of his own scene-shifters who could not have spoken To be, or not to be, better than he did[755]; yet ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... delicate, sensitive face and intelligent brown eyes. He looked eager and interesting. In his case the almost gaunt American physiognomy was softened by a suggestion of poetic impulses. Yet the heritage of nervous energy was apparent. His appearance conveyed the impression of quiet trigness and gentility. His figure lent itself to his clothes, which were utterly inconspicuous, judged by metropolitan standards, but flawless in the face of hard-headed theories of life, and aroused suspicion. He spoke in a gentle but earnest manner, pointing out clearly, yet modestly, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... of the embroidery of pleasant little gratifications only permitted by a surplus of income. It gradually came to be a cherished solace after the labors of the morning, to carry to the sick and afflicted, dwelling in homes of faded gentility like her own, some delicacy made by her own hands. While these were received in the spirit in which they were brought, the girl's lovely, sympathetic face was far more welcome, and the orphan began ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... "more than one touch of gentility, of fine feeling." If the father was in "some business," most likely it ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... this remark in considering the expression "play the agreeable," which was unpleasantly suggestive to her of under-bred gentility. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... to see, is unabating. A new generation of little maidens is springing up around us, are they, too, destined to follow the beaten track their elders have trodden so unworthily? Will they be taught these nice discriminations between wealth and no wealth? Must they, too, meet a struggling gentility with a haughty, overbearing carriage, and elbow out less independent aspirants, whom some capricious fortune has brought within their contact? Does one little star in the vault above shine less brightly or twinkle ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... great-grandfather was a younger son of the first Lord Northmoor, but for some misconduct was cast off and proscribed. As you know, my grandfather and father devoted themselves to horses on the old farm, and made no pretensions to gentility. The elder branch of the family was once numerous, but it must have since dwindled till the old lord was left with only a little grandson, who died of diphtheria a short ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knew anything of art, that is excellence in things made by man, they would not abide the shams of it; and if the real thing were not to be had, they would learn to do without, nor think their gentility injured by ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... he conceived would fit his needs, and an ambition. This last was nothing less than to strike it rich and set himself up among the eminently bourgeois of London. It seemed that the situation of the wealthy English middle class, with just enough gentility above to aspire to, and sufficient smaller fry to bully and patronize, appealed to his imagination, though of course he did not put it so ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... were also limited or regulated by law. No person whose estate did not exceed 200 pounds, could wear "gold or silver lace, or any lace above 2 shillings per yard." The "selectmen" were required to take note of the "apparel" of the people, especially their "ribbands and great boots." Only the gentility, including ministers and their wives, received the prefix Mr. and Mrs. to their names. Others, above servitude, were ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... sunshine, has a very money-making impression on the world. It shows a spirit superior to feelings of paltry economy, and we think a person would be much more excusable for being victimized by a man with a good velvet collar to his coat, than by one exhibiting that spurious sign of gentility—a horse and gig. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... "I am utterly wretched now. The simplest gentility—" she paused, but her wish was clear. He restrained himself with difficulty. Drifting slowly across the scattered roofs of the town was the leaden smoke of his mills and fires; as they drove into the main street the thin crash of his iron was audible. Men everywhere ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... coming, she would be offended. Oldaker related an incident of the ball given to the Prince of Wales, travelling as Baron Renfrew, on the evening of October 12, 1860, in which his father had figured briefly before the royal guest to the abiding credit of American tact and gentility. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... every possible cent, we should become slipshod and shabby. Carelessness in dress takes away from our rating as nothing else will for it has to do with first impressions of those with whom we come in contact. Gentility pays dividends of the highest order, being, as it is, a badge of character. Neatness bespeaks character, and it is just as cheap in dollars and cents to keep ourselves respectably clothed as to indulge in shoddy apparel under the delusion that ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... that which is ordinarily bestowed on them, is required. Foremost in consideration must be the subject of cleanliness. Dirty and coarse hands are no less marks of slothfulness and lowbreeding than clean and delicate hands are of refinement and gentility. To promote softness and whiteness of the skin, mild emollient soaps, or those abounding in oil or fat, should alone be adopted for common use; by which means the tendency to contract chaps and chilblains, and roughness from drying winds, will also be lessened. The coarse, strong ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... parents were Spanish nobles, perhaps the most haughty class of nobility which has ever existed. It was, however, a decayed family, so impoverished as to find it difficult to maintain the position of gentility. The parents were not able to give their son a liberal education. Their rank did not allow them to introduce him to any of the pursuits of industry; and so far as can now be learned, the years of his early ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... the principal elements of aristocratic gentility, with a few outlying old maids of good family, spinsters who have solved the problem: given a human being, to remain absolutely stationary. They might be sealed up in the houses where you see them; their faces and their dresses are literally part of the fixtures ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... but not so sorry as she was for herself. For him she had a touch of indignation. To be so nice, so refined, while all the time he was "Snooks," to hide under a pretentious gentility of demeanour the badge sinister of his surname seemed a sort of treachery. To put it in the language of sentimental science she felt he had "led ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... is young Fairfax," he said to himself as he jogged slowly homeward in the Arden fly, the single vehicle of that kind at the disposal of the village gentility; "so that is the son of Temple Fairfax. There is a look of his father in his eyes, but not that look of wicked power in his face that there was in the Colonel's—not that thorough stamp of a bold bad man. It will come, I suppose, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... you try them, first-rate." Herrick had filled his pipe, and now took up the match-box. "Seriously, Barry, I know what you mean. So long as we have false standards of gentility I suppose the sight of a shrimp in conjunction with the tea-pot will cause us to shrivel up. But I'll guarantee that neither Mrs. Anstey nor Miss Lynn turned a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... points to Mrs. Potter Palmer or the wife of a millionaire pork-packer . Although she has "seen" the bluff of the notorious Smith-Vanderbilt-Belmont female and "raised" her out of her bunion repositories, she has probably not yet reached the summit of her social ambition. Bred to shabby gentility , Miss Alva Smith proceeded to "splurge" when she captured a Vanderbilt. She had probably never seen a hundred dollar bill until permitted to finger the fortune of the profane old ferryman who founded her husband's ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... agreeable wildness of spirit, superior to the forms of common breeding. He afterwards found means to make her acquainted with some distinguished patterns of her own sex, by whom she was admitted into the most elegant parties, and continued to make good her pretensions to gentility, with great circumspection. But one evening, being at cards with a certain lady whom she detected in the very fact of unfair conveyance, she taxed her roundly with the fraud, and brought upon herself such a torrent of sarcastic reproof, as overbore all her ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... looking very well, and who was most becomingly dressed, moved to a seat from which she could command a view of the road outside. She was the first to recover herself. Her aunt, a faded, anaemic-looking lady of somewhat too obtrusive gentility, was still sitting with her ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... class of Americans who copied foreign manners, the United States of America had gained something of a national character in European estimation. In the New World alone, labor was deemed compatible with gentility. The increasing facilities of traffic and manufacture gave a tremendous impulse to the development of the country. Thus a surprising number of railroads were opened in the States of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Improvements connecting Philadelphia and Pittsburg ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Gentleman, a circumstance of which an ignorant panegyrist has praised him for not being proud; when the truth is, that the appellation of Gentleman, though now lost in the indiscriminate assumption of Esquire[111], was commonly taken by those who could not boast of gentility. His father was Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction[112], who settled in Lichfield as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... shifting thing, sometimes caused by accident and sometimes made by tradesmen, but that good manners are the same to-day that they were hundreds of years ago, and that though the ways in which they are shown change, the basis is always the same, being kindness and gentility." ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... persuaded that his style of football wasn't a success. "But for that unfortunate riot, which comes from playing with less cultured colleges," he remarked to a Senior the next spring, "that would have been the most successful exhibition of mental control and inherent gentility ever seen at Siwash." ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... rule and lead the people. It is true that men, in this present age, become distinguished for other things, and may have name and fame, and flatterers and lacqueys, and the oblation of flattery, who would, in a knightly age, have been despised for the want in them of all true gentility and courage; and that such men are as likely as any to be voted for by the multitude, who rarely love or discern or receive truth; who run after fortune, hating what is oppressed, and ready to worship the prosperous; who love accusation ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... for an occasional vividness, of no extraordinary kind. I will just note one of these occasions, ere I pass on to what makes my dreamer truly interesting. It seemed to him that he was in the first floor of a rough hill-farm. The room showed some poor efforts at gentility, a carpet on the floor, a piano, I think, against the wall; but, for all these refinements, there was no mistaking he was in a moorland place, among hillside people, and set in miles of heather. He looked down from the window upon a bare farmyard, that seemed to have been long disused. A great, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you are talking!" cried the accused, who was dressed with his habitual shabby gentility. "The girl yonder, mademoiselle, killed ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux |
