"Gentlefolk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seventy offered to mistresses in residential schools of a higher grade. Miss Farnborough's mistresses were women trained at the various universities; the school itself was situated in a fashionable neighbourhood, and its pupils were for the most part daughters of professional men, and gentlefolk of moderate incomes. There was no pension scheme, and mistresses had to live out, but with care and economy they could take out some insurance ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... these brethren looked what they were, knights of high degree; and considering their great stature, long swords, and the coats of mail they always wore beneath their gambesons, none believed them but plain gentlefolk bent on a pious errand. Indeed, they nicknamed them Sir Peter and Sir John, and as such they ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... husband, with all your fads; and this has come upon you since you have taken it into your head to frequent the gentlefolk. ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... and raising her head she saw 'Old Father Time,' with scythe on shoulder, leaning on the little gate which led from the strip of garden to the road, and looking at her with the expression which implied a sarcastic view of things in general, and especially of 'gentlefolk.' But he was favourably inclined to Mrs. Sarratt, and when Nelly invited him in, he obeyed her, and grounding his scythe, as though it had been a gun, he stood leaning upon it, indulgently listening while she congratulated ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... object to nothing?" cried the baroness with extraordinary bitterness. "You draw the line nowhere? All the traditions and prejudices of gentlefolk are supremely indifferent ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... never been the residence of the English kings since the second George gave the third George an enduring disgust for it by boxing the ears of the boy there in a fit of grandfatherly impatience, it has been and is the home of many English gentlefolk, rarely privileged, in a land of rare privileges, to live in apartments granted them by royal favor. In former times the privilege was now and then abused by tenants who sublet their rooms in lodgings; but the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... courtly and tender with one another, never hasty of speech, never impatient. They have been lovers, and then they are gentlefolk. Father waited, and mother kept on telling me about grandmamma and the cat, the birds and the best china, the fire on the hearth in cool evenings, and the last year's canned fruit, which might as well be used up while she was away, particularly ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... green lads, from every variety of parentage and previous surroundings, pitchforked into Annapolis once every year; and, of all the humanizing and harmonizing influences under which they came, none exceeded that of the quiet gentlefolk, of modest means, with whom they mingled thus freely. Indeed, one of the most astute of our superintendents took into account the family of an officer before ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... night before," the lady defended herself. "Indeed, I've made a point of travelling as little as possible, except by carriage. I don't consider trains a means of conveyance for gentlefolk. They seem well enough for cattle who may ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... New England Abolitionist; to regard the period before the war in Virginia as attained perfection, and the present as falling short of that perfection only inasmuch as it had occurred since the surrender. As life in a small place, among a simple and guileless class of gentlefolk, all passionately cherishing the same opinions, had never shaken these illusions, it was but natural that they should have done their best to hand them down as sacred heirlooms to their only child. Even Gabriel's four years of hard fighting and ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... looking from the little casement. He turned and showed a face working with agitation. "And you, if you wore no sword, nor dared wear one? If you walked in Tralee a clown among gentlefolk, if you lived a pariah in a corner of pariahs, if your land were the handmaid of nations, and the vampire crouched upon her breast, what—what would ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... gravity and stateliness my lady and the general led off the dance, for, according to the good old fashion, the men and maids in their best array joined the gentlefolk and danced with their betters in a high state of pride and bashfulness. Sir Jasper twirled the old housekeeper till her head spun around and around and her decorous skirts rustled stormily; Mrs. Snowdon captivated the gray-haired butler by her condescension; and John was made a proud man ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... hour, I've found out, for the tellin' o' tales like mine; an' the folk for whose pleasure I've spun this yarn have thought the fate o' wee Sammy worth their notice an' sighs, an' have thrilled me with wonder an' praise. I'm well warned that gentlefolk t' the s'uth'ard must have love in their tales an' be charmed with great deeds in its satisfaction; but I'm a skillful teller o' tales, as I've been told in high quarters, an' as I've good reason t' believe, indeed, with my own common sense and discretion ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... who wore white robes whom I took to be their gentlefolk, but the most of them had only cloths or girdles about their middles. Leading the throng was Kari, who, as it appeared from the bushes, waved his hand and pointed me out seated in the shining armour on the ship, the visor up to show my face and the long sword in my hand. They stared, ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... my ears are weel accustomed to the clatter of the camp, and it's no a coarse word here or there would offend Jock Grimond. But the men I mean are of the other kind; they speak like gentlefolk, and micht, for the manner o' them, sit wi' her ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... the organizing ideas have slackened, the old habitual bonds have relaxed or altogether come undone. And America too, is, as it were, a detached, outlying part of that estate which has expanded in queer ways. George Washington, Esquire, was of the gentlefolk, and he came near being a King. It was Plutarch, you know, and nothing intrinsically American that prevented ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... much desired To rank with gentlefolk, So bought a place He called "The Chase," And ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... dreadful things like "Put that in your pipe and smoke it"? The cheap fun that she got out of a girl-friend who had made it a rule to pray for her was the kind of thing you would be sorry to find in a common boarding-school. And are gentlefolk in the habit of asking a man, as Constance did, how it was that he ever came to get engaged to such a woman as the one of his choice? In ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... as there ain't no such a place for thretty mile round," said Betty, proudly, "But do'ee come in, tho', and sit'ee down a bit," she added, bustling inside her door, and beginning to rub down a chair with her apron; "'tis a smart step for gentlefolk to walk afore church." Betty's notions of the walking powers of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... produced ourselves. We have been gentlefolk in spite of all, we have been true even in our iniquities to the traditions of our race. No, I cannot assert that these traditions always square with ethics or even with the Decalogue, for we have added a very complex Eleventh Commandment concerning honor. And for the rest, we have defiantly embroidered ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... sequestered spot, men whose grandfathers fought with our George against the George of England. But, as their forefathers came, still come they, and will come for generations, for this is the ancient Mecca of Virginia gentlefolk to whom tradition ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon |
