Gentlemen

Gentlemen initially denoted well-educated men of good family and distinction. In this sense, the word equates with the French gentilhomme ("nobleman"), which latter term was, in Great Britain, long confined to the peerage. The word gentry derives from the old term Adel, but without the strict technical requirements of those traditions, such as quarters of nobility. To a degree, gentleman signified a man with an income derived from property, a legacy or some other source, and was thus independently wealthy and did not need to work. The term was particularly used of those who could not claim nobility or even the rank of esquire. Widening further, it became a politeness for all men, as in the phrase Ladies and Gentlemen. In modern speech, the term is usually democratised so as to include any man of good, courteous conduct, or even to all men (as in indications of gender-separated facilities, or as a sign of the speaker's own courtesy when addressing others).

Richard Brathwait's The Complete English Gentleman (1630), showing the exemplary qualities of a gentleman

To be a gentleman does not depend upon the tailor or the toilet. Good clothes are not good habits. A gentleman is just a gentle-man; no more, no less: a diamond polished, that was first a diamond in the rough. ~ William Croswell Doane

We are gentlemen,
That neither in our hearts, nor outward eyes
Envy the great, nor do the low despise. ~ William Shakespeare

You will not live in the insular world of Hampden-Sydney's Founders. Your world could not be more different from theirs. It is, however, Hampden-Sydney's belief that the characteristics of the 18th-century gentleman are as important today as two hundred years ago. It is your task to prove it. ~ Thomas H. Shomo

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations · See also · External links

A

• The taste of beauty, and the relish of what is decent, just and amiable, perfects the character of the gentleman and the philosopher. And the study of such a taste or relish will, as we suppose, be ever the great employment and concern of him who covets as well to be wise and good, as agreeable and polite.
  • Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), "Miscellany III".

• He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.
  • Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813), Ch. 56.

B

• Rousseauist and Baconian, though often superficially at odds with one another, have co-operated in undermining, not merely religious tradition, but another tradition which in the Occident goes back finally, not to Judea, but to ancient Greece. This older tradition may be defined as humanistic. The goal of the humanist is poised and proportionate living. This he hopes to accomplish by observing the law of measure. ... Decorum is supreme for the humanist even as humility takes precedence over all other virtues in the eyes of the Christian. Traditionally the idea of decorum has been associated, often with a considerable admixture of mere formalism, with the idea of the gentleman.
  • Irving Babbitt, "What I Believe" (1930), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), pp. 6-7

• Nothing is more certain, than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners and with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.
  • Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution (1790), paragraph 133.

• Tho' modest, on his unembarrass'd brow
  Nature had written—"Gentleman."
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto IX, Stanza 83.

C

• No one can consider himself a gentleman who engages in the vice of lying.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, "The Novel of the Little Gipsy Girl", in Exemplary Novels (1613), trans. Edith Grossman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), p. 35.

• You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher oh manners.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table talk (May 5, 1830), in Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge (London: John Murray, 1835), Vol. I, pp. 115–116.

D

• I was ne'er so thrummed since I was a gentleman.
  • Thomas Dekker, The Honest Whore (1604), Part I, Act IV, scene 2.

• The best of men
  That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer;
  A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,
  The first true gentleman that ever breathed.
  • Thomas Dekker, The Honest Whore (1604), Part I, Act I, scene 2.

• To be a gentleman does not depend upon the tailor, or the toilet.… Good clothes are not good habits.… A gentleman is just a gentle-man; no more, no less: a diamond polished, that was first a diamond in the rough.
  • George Washington Doane, "The Ends and Objects of Burlington College: An Address" (Burlington: Edmund Morris, 1848), p. 9.

• His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen.
  • John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Part I, line 645.

E

• Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman,—repose in energy.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860), Ch. IV: "Culture", p. 138.

G

• In whatever society he might find himself, the humblest citizen should therefore so order his behaviour that when he left the table men would say "A gentleman was here."
  • Alice Stopford Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (London: Macmillan & Co., 1894), Vol. II, Ch. I: "Town Manners", p. 9.

H

• A Christian is God Almighty's gentleman: a gentleman, in the vulgar, superficial way of understanding the word, is the Devil's Christian.
  • Augustus William Hare, in Julius Charles Hare and Augustus William Hare, Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan and Co., 1871), p. 158.

• Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman: elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings!
  • William Hazlitt, "On the Look of a Gentleman", in The London Magazine (January 1821), p. 39; reprinted in The Plain Speaker (London: Henry Colburn, 1826), p. 39.

• By the by if the English race had done nothing else, yet if they left the world the notion of a gentleman, they would have done a great service to mankind.
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins, letter to Robert Bridges (3 February 1883), in The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges, ed. C. C. Abbott (Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 176.

J

• A gentleman I could never make him, though I could make him a lord.
  • James I of England, to his old nurse, who begged him to make her son a gentleman.
  • Sir James Lawrence, On the Nobility of the British Gentry, 4th edition (London: James Fraser, 1840), p. 38; quoting from Londres et les Anglais (1804) by J. L. Ferri de St.-Constant.

K

• A man may learn from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the drawing-rooms in London.
  • Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies (London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1863), Ch. 3, pp. 121–122.

M

• Bob Forestier had pretended for so many years to be a gentleman that in the end, forgetting that it was all a fake, he had found himself driven to act as in that stupid, conventional brain of his he thought a gentleman must act. No longer knowing the difference between sham and real, he had sacrificed his life to a spurious heroism.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, "The Lion's Skin" (1937), in Collected Short Stories 1, p. 283.

N

• It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain.
  • John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (1873), Discourse VIII, § 10.

P

• It is the final test of a gentleman—his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.
  • William Lyon Phelps, quoted in The Golden Book Magazine (July 1935), "Clues", p. 81.

• It is much easier to be a hero than a gentleman. You can be a hero from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time. Which isn't easy.
  • Luigi Pirandello, The Pleasure of Honesty (1917), Act I, scene 3.

S

• My master hath been an honourable gentleman; tricks he hath had in him, which gentlemen have.
  • William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act V, scene 3, line 238.

• I freely told you, all the wealth I had
  Ran in my veins, I was a gentleman.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act III, scene 2, line 257.

• A gentleman born, master parson; who writes himself 'Armigero;' in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, 'Armigero.'
  • William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597; published 1602), Act I, scene 1, line 9.

• We are gentlemen,
  That neither in our hearts, nor outward eyes
  Envy the great, nor do the low despise.
  • William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre (c. 1607-08), Act II, scene 3, line 25.

• Since every Jack became a gentleman,
  There's many a gentle person made a Jack.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act I, scene 3, line 72.

• An affable and courteous gentleman.
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), Act I, scene 2, line 98.

• "I am a gentleman." I'll be sworn thou art;
  Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit,
  Do give thee five-fold blazon.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act I, scene 5, line 310.

• He is complete in feature, and in mind,
  With all good grace to grace a gentleman.
  • William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), Act II, scene 4, line 73.

• You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals (1775), Act IV, scene 2.

• The Hampden-Sydney ideal of a gentleman reaches back to the 18th century and to the men of the early Republic who defined their lives by honor, service, public virtue, and personal self-restraint. This is what the College's Founders meant by "good men and good citizens." To form good men and good citizens is still today the mission of Hampden-Sydney College. However, you will not live in the insular world of Hampden-Sydney's Founders. Your world could not be more different from theirs. It is, however, Hampden-Sydney's belief that the characteristics of the 18th-century gentleman are as important today as two hundred years ago. It is your task to prove it.
  • Thomas H. Shomo, To Manner Born, To Manners Bred: A Hip-pocket Guide to Etiquette for the Hampden-Sydney Man, 9th edition (2016), p. 11

• When you leave the little world of Hampden-Sydney, you will still have much to learn of the diversity of the greater world, of the customs and manners of the many cultures you will encounter and interact with as you make your life and living in a global economy. I hope that your recognition of the value of the traditional social customs as they are practiced in our small community will make you keenly aware of the importance of the traditional social customs of other communities- whether ethnic neighborhoods or nations. I end this epilogue as I have ended others before. You are a Hampden-Sydney Gentleman, and as Cardinal Newman wrote, "It is almost the definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain."
  • Thomas H. Shomo, To Manner Born, To Manners Bred: A Hip-pocket Guide to Etiquette for the Hampden-Sydney Man, 9th edition (2016), p. 68-69

• As for gentlemen, they be made good cheap in this kingdom; for whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, who studieth in the Universities, who professeth the liberal sciences, and (to be short) who can live idly, and without manual labour, and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman, he shall be called master, and shall be taken for a gentleman.
  • Sir Thomas Smith, Commonwealth of England, b. 1, c. 20; Steph. Com., Vol. 2 (9th ed.), 619; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 51, n. 4.

• The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne;
  For a man by nothing is so well bewrayed
  As by his manners.
  • Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book VI, Canto III, Stanza 1.

T

• And thus he bore without abuse
  The grand old name of gentleman,
  Defamed by every charlatan
  And soiled with all ignoble use.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), CX, Stanza 6.

• What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, and honest father? Ought his life to be decent—his bills to be paid—his tastes to be high and elegant—his aims in life lofty and noble?
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, The Book of Snobs (London: Punch Office, 1848), p. 11

V

• A gentleman is merely a rascal, better-dressed.
  • Genevieve Valentine, This Evening’s Performance in The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk (2015), ISBN 978-0-7624-5616-1, p. 170

W

• The Italian Nerd does not exist (Nerd in the style of Gary Numan and Kraftwerk, of The Feelies and Devo). The Italian male does not feel / recognize the relevance of nerddom. This was felt at the Milan airport as a patrician black-clad gentleman moved the croissant into his mouth with gusto. The nerds, or what was left of them, were offered American coffee.
  • David Woodard and Christian Kracht, Five Years (2011)

X

• The gentleman knows that whatever is imperfect and unrefined does not deserve praise. ... He makes his eyes not want to see what is not right, makes his ears not want to hear that is not right, makes his mouth not want to speak what is not right, and makes his heart not want to deliberate over what is not right. ... For this reason, power and profit cannot sway him, the masses cannot shift him, and nothing in the world can shake him.
  • Xun Zi, “An Exhortation to Learning,” E. Hutton, trans., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 260

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 310.

• Oh! St. Patrick was a gentleman,
  Who came of decent people.
  • Henry Bennett, St. Patrick was a Gentleman.

• Of the offspring of the gentilman Jafeth come Habraham, Moyses, Aron, and the profettys; also the Kyng of the right lyne of Mary, of whom that gentilman Jhesus was borne.
  • Juliana Berners, Heraldic Blazonry.

See also

• Junzi