"Gentility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me, when I say it would have been difficult to find four young people more likely to attract the attention of a passer-by, than we four were, in the fall of 1797. As for Rupert Hardinge, he resembled his mother, and was singularly handsome in face, as well as graceful in movements. He had a native gentility of air, of which he knew how to make the most, and a readiness of tongue and a flow of spirits that rendered him an agreeable, if not a very instructive companion. I was not ill-looking, myself, though far from possessing the striking countenance of my young associate. In manliness, strength ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... actions and she wouldn't gin in a mite till that day in Vienna she had a letter that brought her nose down where it belonged, and she acted different after readin' it and didn't talk any more about gentility or the onbroken prosperity of the Mudd-Weakdews, and I wuz shocked myself to ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... to cut your stick, tell us what's up,' said an old Republican colonel, who cared not a rap for Imperial gentility and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... substance, and care for the form alone, showed that the form was used only as a protest against the old forms. A provincial narrowness, even a slight air of vulgarity, was felt to attach to the teachings of the Church. Gentility had come to imply not only heathendom, ("gentilis est qui in Christum non credit,") but liberal breeding. The attraction of the classic culture, "the humanities," as it was well called, was just ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... save probably more than they could earn in other ways, besides being much stronger from the exercise thus taken. But too many girls are, unfortunately, imbued with the vulgar notion that work is not genteel. What a Moloch this gentility has been and still is! What a number of human sacrifices are continually placed at its shrine, and what puppets its votaries become! Mr. Smiles says: 'There is a dreadful ambition abroad for being "genteel." We keep up appearances too often at the expense of honesty, and though we may not be rich, ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... 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 ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... say "Shoot a nickel, Grandmother?" If she wishes to play she will reply "Shoot, boy!" and you should then select some spot suitable for the game and assist her, if she wishes your aid, to kneel on the ground. It might be an added mark of gentility to offer her your handkerchief or coat upon which ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... me infinite delectation. Although his views of life may be what Melford would call depraved, at any rate they are first-hand. He does not waste his time in futile politeness." Suddenly he paused, and seized me by the shoulder and shook me, as he had often done before. "Creep out of that shell of gentility, you little hermit-crab," he cried, "and tell me how you would like to live in Melford for the rest of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... government, over every acre of the French soil, and, worst of all, over 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... young gentleman, are you?" he continued, without attending to my observations. "Sent to sea to learn manners! Well, we'll soon knock your gentility out of you, let me tell you. Howsomdever, we don't want no help here, so be off on shore again; and when you meet John Smith, just ask him to take you a walk through the town, and not to bring you back to make yourself useful till the ship's ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... good or bad address rewarded by the laughter or applause of the spectators. But when a slender young man, dressed with great simplicity, yet not without a certain air of pretension to elegance and gentility, approached the station with his fusee in his hand, his dark-green cloak thrown back over his shoulder, his laced ruff and feathered cap indicating a superior rank to the vulgar, there was a murmur of interest among the spectators, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... half-scornful squint at the partridges. "I dun'no' much about shootin'," said she, shortly. Ann had always been, in her own family, a passionate woman, but among outsiders she had borne herself with dignified politeness and formal gentility, clothing, as it were, her intensity of spirit with a company garb. Now, since her terrible trouble had come upon her, this garb had often slipped aside, and revealed, with the indecency of affliction, the struggling naked spirit of the woman to those ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... sleep of exhaustion, and lay like a log in his mother's arms. 'Bert, for no other reason than that he had tired himself out, was sulky and uncommunicative. But 'Beida—whose whole manner ever changed when once she had been persuaded into fine clothes—wore an air of sustained gentility. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... in a case against the wall, there was a scant display of cut glass; but the linen was worn thin and the expensive velvet carpet had been ruined by hob-nailed boots. Heavy workingmen's dishes lay on the tables, the plating was worn from the knives, and the last echoing ghost of vanished gentility was dispelled by a voice from the kitchen. It was the Widow Huff, once the first lady of Keno, but now a ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... ye men without eyes! Ye insects! A Stolen horse and saddle and bridle, are they not a passport of gentility ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... And after this again there comes an appendix containing an apologia for Lavengro, a great deal more polemic against Romanism, some historical views of more originality than exactness, and a diatribe against gentility, Scotchmen, Scott, and other black beasts of Borrow's. This appendix has received from some professed admirers of the author a great deal more attention than it deserves. In the first place, it was evidently ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... an old family-coach in his newfangled chariot—they certainly have got on before it. Charleston has an air of eccentricity, too, and peculiarity, which formerly were not deemed unbecoming the well-born and well-bred gentlewoman, which her gentility itself sanctioned and warranted—none of the vulgar dread of vulgar opinion, forcing those who are possessed by it to conform to a general standard of manners, unable to conceive one peculiar to itself,—this ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... in order to belie his air of gentility for his entry had been followed by a pause of talk. His face was heated. To appear natural he pushed his cap back on his head and planted his elbows on the table. The mechanic and the two work-girls examined ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... absence of all real taste. For it is physically impossible for any one to like such a combination of plants better than larkspurs and lilies and roses. What they did enjoy was not the flowers themselves but their association with gentility. But so strong was the contagion of this association that cottagers themselves began to throw away their beautiful cottage-garden flowers and to grow these plants, so detestable in combination. And to this day ...
— Progress and History • Various
... practical features.—C.D.W.]—stimulated industry, thrift, the inclination to settle down to the necessary hard work of the world, or have they bred idleness, indisposition to work, a vaporous ambition in politics, and that sort of conceit of gentility of which the world has already enough? If any one is in doubt about this he can satisfy himself by a sojourn in different localities in the South. The condition of New Orleans and its negro universities is often cited. It is a favorable ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... him, 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 ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... days calicoes were not common, but every one had woollen garments and pieces, and the quilts made of these were of grateful warmth in bleak New England. All kinds of commonplace garments and remnants of decayed gentility were pressed into service in these quilts: portions of the moth-eaten and discarded uniforms of militia-men, worn-out flannel sheets dyed with some brilliant home-dye, old coat and cloak linings, well-worn petticoats. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... in double pipes; And a double barrel and double snipes Give the sportsman a duplicate pleasure; There's double safety in double locks: And double letters bring cash for the box: And all the world knows that double knocks, Are gentility's double measure. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility, And the devil was pleased, for his darling sin Is the pride that apes humility." ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... in their mouths, but lures, decoys, chisel'd likenesses of dead wood, to catch the masses. Of fine afternoons, along the broad tracks of the Park, for many years, had swept by my friend, as he stood on guard, the carriages, &c., of American Gentility, not by dozens and scores, but by hundreds and thousands. Lucky brokers, capitalists, contractors, grocery-men, successful political strikers, rich butchers, dry goods' folk, &c. And on a large proportion of these vehicles, on panels or horse-trappings, were ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... me to discover, that this man, with all his parade of conformity, objects to every thing that is not proposed by himself: but he is so much admired by this family for his gentility, that he thinks himself ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... physical and general appearance with that of 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 ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... embraces a century. The muse of history has marked the spot with one of her red battleflags, and thus distinguished her from the herd of new places whose mushroom growth is like that of the gentility which they harbor. ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... soften and polish the manners, and, by the introduction of the manufacture of silken housings tapestry, and carpeting, to increase the comforts and pleasures of society, and compelled those who were anxious to exhibit the insignia of gentility, to seek distinction by other means than rapine ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... 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 Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... your profession has the more gentility, And that you are condescending to be seen along with me; If you notice that I'm shabby while your clothes are spruce and new — You have only got to hint it: I'm ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... if he could be so called, with money annoyances. I knew, or thought I knew, at all events, the expression loss of fortune stamps on a man's face; and the look which haunted me for days after had nothing in it of discontent, or self-assertion, or struggling gentility, or vehement protest against the decrees of fortune. Still less was it submissive. As I have said, it haunted me for days, then the memory grew less vivid, then I forgot the man altogether. Indeed, we shortly became so absorbed ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... railway communication, is now 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 ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... nights good sleep. For, by way of doing a little dandy in passing through such a celebrated city, I disencumbered the under part of my saddle of the blanket, and the upper part of the boat-cloak with which it was usually adorned; and the penalty which I paid for my gentility was, sleeping the next two nights in position two miles in front of the town, while these useful appendages were lying on the baggage two miles in ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... their bodies sawing in an everlasting bow: and, how many youths have I seen who, if they had spent, in the learning of grammar, a tenth part of the time that they have consumed in earning merited contempt for their affected gentility, would have laid the foundation of sincere respect towards them for the whole ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... and therewith an implied reflection on THEIR lack of intelligence and general worthiness. If there is any one text universally known and nurtured of the Unlettered masses of our common country, it is that which reads, "All men are created equal." Therefore it is a becoming thing when true gentility prefers to overlook some variations of the class who, more from lack of cultivation than out of rude intent, sometimes almost compel a positive doubt of the nice veracity of the declaration, or at least a grief at the munificent liberality of the so-bequoted statement. ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... young men of the professions, who saw incomes curtailed or cut off; to whom frank poverty would have been almost a relief but who must, as habit and the custom, of their kind decreed, keep up their sham and shabby gentility? ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... explained to us that our request was out of 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 ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... things, ordinary run of things; matter of course; beaten path, beaten track, beaten ground. prescription, custom, use, usage, immemorial usage, practice; prevalence, observance; conventionalism, conventionality; mode, fashion, vogue; etiquette &c (gentility) 852; order of the day, cry; conformity &c 82; consuetude, dustoor^. one's old way, old school, veteris vestigia flammae [Lat.]; laudator temporis acti [Lat.]. rule, standing order, precedent, routine; red-tape, red-tapism^; pipe clay; rut, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... two consequences arising from this general but unacknowledged poverty, and this very much acknowledged gentility, which were not amiss, and which might be introduced into many circles of society to their great improvement. For instance, the inhabitants of Cranford kept early hours, and clattered home in their pattens, under the guidance of a lantern-bearer, about nine o'clock at night; and the whole ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on the advantages of birth, and the presumption of new men in attempting to found a new system of gentility, Boswell proceeds: "Mr. Thrale had married Miss Hester Lynch Salusbury, of good Welsh extraction, a lady of lively talents, improved by education. That Johnson's introduction into Mr. Thrale's family, which contributed so much to ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... exponent of a feeling which pervades the popular mind in the metropolis on the subject of the duty which respectable people owe to respectability. It is impossible for a housekeeper in a neighbourhood having any claims to gentility, to escape the recognition of this feeling in the lower class of industrials. If you have a broken window in the front of your house, the travelling glazier thinks, to use his own expression, that you have a right to have it repaired, and therefore ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... to some distinguished stranger—for such were never permitted to pass through the town without a tender of the hospitality of that venerable and elegant gentleman—whose prolonged life exhibited to another generation a pattern of old gentility, combined with a conscientious and effective performance of not only the smaller and more graceful duties of life, which he sweetened and adorned, but also of those graver and higher tasks which ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... then find ourselves only beginning when at the finish:"—an idea held substantially by so different a young person as Preciosa McNulty, who was preparing to set aside her mother's careful ambitions and to take a step forward on her own account. Only, Preciosa was looking less for cultivation and gentility than for "temperament." Less the dry specialist, however successful in the accumulation of this world's goods, than the resonant adventurer that would bring her full chance at all the manifold haps and mishaps of ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... moment all this life and colour. The hum of distant voices certainly reached there, but that was all, for Bashford's Lane, a retiring thoroughfare facing a blank dock wall, capped here and there by towering spars, set an example of gentility which neighbouring streets had long ago decided crossly was impossible for ordinary people to follow. Its neatly grained shutters, fastened back by the sides of the windows, gave a pleasing idea of uniformity, while its white ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... far regions men are not particular how or what they eat; of necessity they abandon the refinements of civilisation as needless and cumbrous. To-day, however, partly to protract his stay and so give Spurling time, partly to assert his waning gentility, the memory of which in its heyday Strangeways shared, he attempted to be lavish, to set a table, and to entertain. For cloth he spread a dress-length of gaudy muslin, such as Indians purchase for their squaws. He opened some tins of canned goods that he might ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... supererogatory soap. Pass through the baize doors and you will see the nave filled with well-shaped benches, understood to be free seats; while in certain eligible corners, less directly under the fire of the clergyman's eye, there are pews reserved for the Shepperton gentility. Ample galleries are supported on iron pillars, and in one of them stands the crowning glory, the very clasp or aigrette of Shepperton church-adornment—namely, an organ, not very much out of repair, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... old family estates 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 draw them ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... thorns ever since I mooted 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 planter at Henricus, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... "They'll be wantin' to talk o' old times, and we don't wanter be too previous," suggested Wynbrook. But their verdict, when they at last met the new cousin, was unanimous, and their praises extravagant. To their inexperienced eyes she seemed to possess all her aunt's gentility and precision of language, with a vivacity and playfulness all her own. In a few days the whole camp was in love with her. Yet she dispensed her favors with such tactful impartiality and with such innocent enjoyment—free from any suspicion of coquetry—that there were ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... stretch forth thy wings and fly Amongst the nobles and gentility; Thou'rt not to sell to scavengers and clowns, But given to worthy persons of renown. The number's few I've printed, in regard My charges have been great, and I hope reward; I caus'd not print many above twelve score, And the printers are engaged ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... by this outrage?" she stormed. Her voice was low and rich, with a charming roundness that seemed the very hallmark of gentility. But, now, it was surcharged with an indignant amazement over the indignity put upon her by the representatives of the law. Then, abruptly, the blue eyes were softened in their fires, as by the sudden nearness ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... again to his visitors. But the visitors were rapidly retreating along the path, the lines of Miss Elvira's back indicating disgust and outraged gentility. Mrs. Chase, however, looked back. Obviously she still did not know what ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... obliged to him if he would inform her of the best way to article her son (aged seventeen) to the engineering profession in a manner suitable to his position. Something like that. You can understand from that that my mother had grasped the principle of gentility all right. It went down, too, for in a few days we had an answer, in which the great man gave the names of three or four firms in London that he recommended as reliable and old-established. We selected one, and apparently Sir Gregory's name was an open sesame there, for we had an invitation ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... much more suggestive and imposing than Ehrenthal's had been. Passing through this door, the visitor entered an empty lobby, in which a shrewd youth spent the day as half porter, half errand-boy, and a spy besides. This youth differed from the original Itzig only by a species of shabby gentility in his appearance. He wore his master's old clothes—shining silk waistcoats, and a coat a little too large for him. He showed, in short, that the new firm was more advanced in matters of taste and toilette than the in many respects commonplace establishment of Ehrenthal. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... in a bewildering dream. As the great floating palace, all aglitter and aglow with splendors of paint and upholstery hitherto unknown, swung from her moorings out into the stream, Dan quite forgot the gentility of his surroundings and the elegant Dud Fielding at his elbow, and waved his hat with a wild "Hurrah" to half a dozen Wharf Rats who were ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... the Lambs,—poor and obscure, and unfortunate to a degree. No pretensions to gentility had ever been in the family, but an acceptance of their commonplace lot, with little striving for higher things. There was something more, too, than poverty and obscurity and vulgarity in their antecedents; a fearful curse was in the family, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... with him, 'a lie.' To show the wickedness and extreme folly of swearing, he gives the words and imprecations then commonly in use; but which, happily for us, we never hear, except among the most degraded classes of society. Swearing was formerly considered to be a habit of gentility; but now it betrays the blackguard, even when disguised in genteel attire. Those dangerous diseases which are so surely engendered by filth and uncleanness, he calls not by Latin but by their plain English names. In every case, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cultivation without losing its sylvan flavor. I have never seen the social art carried farther without suggestion of artifice. The fact that Don Egidio's amenities were mainly exercised on the mill-hands composing his parish proved the genuineness of his gift. It is easier to simulate gentility among gentlemen than among navvies; and the plain man is a touchstone who draws out all the alloy ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... the most abject slaves. They were allowed no privileges such as their former habits impelled them to seek. If they played a flute in the hearing of the overseer, they were commanded to be silent instantly. If they dared to put a gold ring on their finger, even that trifling pretension to gentility was detected and disallowed by the jealous overseer. (These things were specified by Mr. G. himself.) They were seldom permitted to associate with the overseers as equals. The only thing which reconciled the book-keepers to this abject state, was the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... small but influential 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 ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... almshouse?" screamed out Mrs. Church. "This is a nice state of things, I must say. Who minds what a slip of a young lady says?—meaning no offence to you, miss; but I have been spending my money right and left, getting tea that beats all for gentility, and now one of the ladies is off as it were in a flash of an eye. What ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... fine will satisfy the accommodating spirit of the authorities. The ill-favored mother was not, therefore, in any way bound to answer this somewhat abrupt question; but, observing the appearance of high gentility, and touched by the engaging manner of the interrogator, she answered, that her appetite had of late been uncertain, and that she was endeavoring to restore it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... paid four, which he regarded as a beggarly pittance. Roswell's father had once kept a small dry goods store on Broadway, but failed after being in business a little less than a year. This constituted his claim to gentility. After his failure, Mr. Crawford tried several kinds of business, without succeeding in any. His habits were not strictly temperate, and he had died two years previous. His wife hired a house in Clinton Place, and took boarders, barely succeeding in making both ends meet at the ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... traveler secured a seat at table opposite Miss Garnet and put more majestic gentility into his breakfasting than he had ever done before. Once he pushed the sugar most courteously to the lady she was with, and once, with polished deference, he was asking the gentleman if he could reach the butter, when a ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... all, only a make-believe. Something serious has occurred in your life, and changed all in an instant. You have been thrown against the real world. You find it not to be what you supposed. It is no cause for shame or regret; womanhood lies deeper than any pretense at gentility. Men seldom fail to recognize this fact—their lives of struggle compel them to, but a woman ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... miracle came to pass, and we found an asylum for the winter. At the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa there was a Spanish refugee, who had hidden himself there for I don't know what political reason. Visiting the monastery, we were struck with the gentility of his manners, the melancholy beauty of his wife, and the rustic and yet comfortable furniture of their cell. The poesy of this monastery had turned my head. It happened that the mysterious couple wished ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Samuel and Cousin Calvin; she in the second with Mr. Purchase, Peter Benny, and Mr. Tulse the lawyer, a large-headed, pallid man, with a strong, clean-shaven face and an air of having attended so many funerals that he paid this one no particular attention. His careless gentility obviously impressed Mr. Purchase, who mopped his forehead at half-minute intervals and as frequently remarked that the day was hot even for the time of year. Mr. Benny was solicitous to know if Mr. Tulse preferred the window up or down. Mr. Tulse ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he 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 ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... found his farther 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 ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of all who can appreciate true nobility of soul and, of course, an object of envy and detraction to her inferiors, especially to some of our fashionable parvenus, whose self-interest prompts them to make money alone the standard of worth, and who are in the habit of determining the gentility of different persons by what they have, not what ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... 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 ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... cambric front? or who imagine that hand accustomed to dirty work which is enveloped in white kid? What Prometheus was to the physical, Stultz is to the moral man—the one made human beings out of clay, the other cuts characters out of broad-cloth. Gentility is, with us, a thing of the goose and shears; and nobility an attribute—not of the mind, but (supreme civilisation!) of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... though in the clubs to which they once belonged, to eat with washen hands and ordered attire, to behave at table and elsewhere with that truest of consideration that offends no man willingly by mannerism, appearance, word or act, and which is the whole Art of Gentility. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... not tell me that you had been hurt, Benita," he exclaimed in his light, refined voice, one of the stamps of that gentility of blood and breeding whereof all his rough years and errors had been unable to deprive him. "They only told me that you were saved. It is part of my ill-fortune that at our first moment of greeting I should give you pain, who have caused ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... hastily fortified, 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 wantonly mutilated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... bitters. "Quality ladies took their bitters regular," she added, to remove any sting of personality from her remark; for, from many things she had let fall, we knew that she did not regard us as quality. On the contrary, she often tried to overbear us with the gentility of her former places; and would tell the lady over whom she reigned that she had lived with folks worth their three and four hundred thousand dollars, who never complained as she did of the ironing. Yet she had a sufficient regard for the literary occupations ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... impossibilities in the peerage than in the nouveaux riches. I know heaps of people who because their names are in Debrett seem to think that manners are unnecessary, and that they have a sort of God-sent title to gentility." ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 myself: I go among the blackguards and wastrels ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... Rooms. In the 'First Class' you find quite a collection of shabby gentility. And you'd never believe what a lot you can get there ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... occasion; for this was one of the Miss Guests' thoroughly condescending parties, including no member of any aristocracy higher than that of St. Ogg's, and stretching to the extreme limits of commercial and professional gentility. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... applauded, by a kindly circle. Some of them Godwin could not but admire, so healthful were they, so bright of intellect, and courteous in manner,—a type distinct from any he had formerly observed. Others were antipathetic to him. Their aggressive gentility conflicted with the wariness of his self-esteem; such a one, for instance, as Bruno Chilvers, the sound of whose mincing voice, as he read in the class, so irritated him that at times he had to cover ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... to fairly exhale gentility, that quality-compact of everything superior in the life of early American womanhood. I have especially in mind one cushion where flowers, apparently as fresh in color as when the cushion was young, are laid upon a ground of silk of the pinky-ash color, ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... who had protected him so generously. The monstrous fraud of civilisation glared stark before his eyes; he saw it as a vast lunatic growth, producing a deepening torrent of savagery below, and above ever more flimsy gentility and silly wastefulness. He could see no redeeming reason, no touch of honour, either in the life he had led or in this life to which he had fallen. Civilisation presented itself as some catastrophic ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... and his immoderate greed. Nowhere are you welcome, except where contractors are digging new roads and blasting rocks and filling sunken lots with ashes and tin cans. The random goat of poverty browses on the very confines of the scanty, small settlement of cheap gentility where you and your neighbors—people of moderate means like yourself—huddle together in your endless, unceasing struggle for a home and self-respect. You know that your smug, mean little house, tricked out with machine-made scroll-work, and insufficiently ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... saw a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility; And the devil did grin, for his darling sin Is the pride that ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... the wall, swinging gently in the draught from the open window, a harpischord stood in a corner, a couch that had apparently been occupied stood between the fireplace and the door, and a score of evidences indicated gentility ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... to his mother how he has been at the head of his class, and showing his school tickets, which his mother, with untiring admiration, deposits in the little real china tea pot—which, as being their most reliable article of gentility, is made the deposit of all the money and most especial valuables ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 every ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of my maternal aunts—the aunt who had gone so many years before to live with her aged relative, the cousin of my father, and the mother of his first wife. Aunt Jenny had resided for many years after this time with an aged widow lady, who had lived apart in quiet gentility on very small means; and now that she was dead, my aunt saw her vocation gone, and wished that she too could live apart, a life of humble independency, supporting herself by her spinning-wheel, and by now and then knitting a stocking. She feared, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... shy neighbourhoods where the Donkey goes in at the street door, and appears to live up-stairs, for I have examined the back-yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him out. Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to do what he does for a costermonger. Feed him with oats at the highest price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... are to add the perfect good Breeding and Civility of the Knight upon every Occasion; which are some Kind of Merit in his Favour, and entitle him to Respect, by the Rules of common Gentility and Decency; At the same time his Courage, his Honour, Generosity, and Humanity, are conspicuous in every Act and Attempt; The Foibles which he possesses, besides giving you exquisite Pleasure, are wholly inspir'd by these worthy Principles; Nor is there ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... a lamp-post before the door, so he knew the house from its neighbours. Baker's Terrace as a whole was a defeated aspiration after gentility. The more auspicious houses were marked by white stones, the steps being scrubbed and hearthstoned almost daily; the gloomier doorsteps were black, except on Sundays. Thus variety was achieved by houses otherwise as monotonous and prosaic as a batch of fourpenny loaves. This ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... appearance with his own, where in a mirror their reflections sat facing each other. There was little to choose between them in outward gentility, despite the immense disparity of their chances. There was no fault to find; everything about Braithwaite bespoke confidence and refinement—his neatly brushed chestnut hair, his well-cut gray tweeds, his black, woven tie with the horse-shoe scarf-pin of diamonds, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... myself, without appearing in want to my step-mother. I compared myself, in this walking pilgrimage, to my friend Venture, on his arrival at Annecy, and was so warmed with the idea, that without recollecting that I had neither his gentility nor his talents, I determined to act the part of little Venture at Lausanne, to teach music, which I did not understand, and say I came from Paris, where I had ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... out, and the brandy was put on the table, and the whisky was there that made the people's hair stand on end. It was then that the floodgates of convivial eloquence would be unloosed. In the mean time it was necessary to sacrifice something to gentility, and therefore they sat over ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... this man with growing wonder. Of course he would like the simple things. No man of her acquaintance had ever possessed truer standards: no sophistication or cultural growth such as she herself had know could have given him a truer gentility. What was this thing that men could learn in the woods and in the North that gave them such poise, such standards, and brought out such qualities of manhood? Yet she knew that the forests did not treat all men alike. Those of intrinsic virtue were made better, their strength was supplemented ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... certain old dame; The same Had a beautiful piggy, whose name Was James; and whose beauty and worth, From the day of his birth, Were matters of popular fame, And his claim To gentility no one ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... Felicia Verity was known to treat her with affection. Mrs. Augustus Cowden, that true blue of county dames and local aristocrats, openly approved her. She sat daily at Sir Charles Verity's table and helped to order his household. What more genuine patents of gentility could be asked? So they listened with a pleasure, deep almost to agitation, to her performances upon the piano, her reminiscences of Bonn and the Rhine Provinces, and, above all, to her anecdotes of life at The Hard and of its distinguished owner's habits and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... with little 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. She ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... dale more snug and genteel it looks than my little house. Now, I'd bet me Sunday brogues, 'tis yerself'll be sorry such fine young women 'ud believe in volunthary sayclusion. When you get inside them walls ye'll see that 'tis jokin' I was, an' that there's fine specimins of beauty and gentility there that 'ud make quare havic among your own kind, if they remained outside," he said laughing broadly, and poking the end of his ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... odd apathy as to my character; rather like death, when one dreams of flying the soul. What does it matter? I should have left the flies and wasps to worry a corpse. And then-good-bye gentility! I should have worked for my bread. I had thoughts of America. I fancy I can write; and Americans, one hears, are gentle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their white for it: add to these a countenance in which, though she was extremely bashful, a sensibility appeared almost incredible; and a sweetness, whenever she smiled, beyond either imitation or description. To conclude all, she had a natural gentility, superior to the acquisition of art, and which surprized all ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding |
