Gentility

I said that my country-folk in general had a great many admirable qualities, but at the same time a great many foibles, foremost amongst which last was a crazy admiration for what they called gentility, which made them sycophantic to their superiors in station, and extremely insolent to those whom they considered below them. ❋ Unknown (2004)

The generality of his countrymen are far more careful not to transgress the customs of what they call gentility, than to violate the laws of honour or morality. ❋ Unknown (1908)

The generality of his countrymen are far more careful not to transgress the customs of what they call gentility than to violate the laws of honour or morality. ❋ George Henry Borrow (1842)

As Maryjean Wall relates in "How Kentucky Became Southern," the state's familiar gentility is largely invented — and relatively recently at that. ❋ Max Watman (2010)

I'm the sort of person who publishes my opinion on the internet ... you can't expect much in the way of gentility from the likes of me. ❋ Rabid1st (2003)

I say "gentility" -- but that is not exactly the word; for there is not the remotest trace of snobbishness in Henry James. ❋ John Cowper Powys (1917)

It is because the indefinable, but to those who can perceive it unmistakable, _aura_ of "gentility" -- in the true and not the debased sense -- is, at best, questionably present. ❋ George Saintsbury (1889)

Social intercourse disseminated these ideas among those to whom they were novel; where, previously, the highest motive to improvement had been a desire for convenience, the idea of gentility began to claim an influence; and some of the more moderate embellishments of life assumed the place of the mere necessaries. ❋ J. L. McConnel (N/A)

To belong to this class when you were at the £400 a year level was a queer business, for it meant that your gentility was almost purely theoretical. ❋ Unknown (1937)

But our gentility is a little self-conscious, for we live on the very frontier of a region, darker in complexion, which is far from scrupulous in deportment. ❋ Christopher Morley (1923)

The farmer's daughter had an instinct for clothes, and Hugh's mind got the idea of gentility by way of the medium of clothes. ❋ Sherwood Anderson (1908)

She was one of those naturally refined but less than half-educated, timid creatures who are to be found now and then painfully earning the bread which is very bitter to them in richer people's houses, and preserving in their little silent souls some fetish in the shape of a scrap of gentility, which is their sole comfort, or almost their sole comfort. ❋ Unknown (1862)

Nor had any one breathed any imputation upon the possession of what used to be known as gentility, before that good word was degraded, to mean something more like what Mrs. Morton aspired to. ❋ Charlotte Mary Yonge (1862)

He does not make the poverty of others the reason for robbing them; he does not make the oppression of others the reason for oppressing them, for his gentility is his religion; and therefore with simple truth and tender audacity the old English dramatist Dekkar calls Him who gave the name to our religion, and who destroyed the plea that might makes right, "the first true gentleman, that ever breathed". ❋ George William Curtis (1858)

I was always impressed by the fact that even with us a well-bred gentleman in reduced circumstances never forgets to keep his beaver well brushed, and I remember that long ago I spoke of the hat as the _ultimum moriens_ of what we used to call gentility, -- the last thing to perish in the decay of a gentleman's outfit. ❋ Oliver Wendell Holmes (1851)

Descending in the scale of what is termed gentility, I found darker and deeper themes for speculation. ❋ Unknown (1845)

That there is some salt in England, minds not swayed by mere externals, he is fully convinced; if he were not, he would spare himself the trouble of writing; but to the fact that the generality of his countrymen are basely grovelling before the shrine of what they are pleased to call gentility, he cannot shut his eyes. ❋ George Henry Borrow (1842)

"La furent li gentil Baron," etc. And he certainly could not have applied the word better than to the strong Norman thief, armed cap-a-pie, without one particle of truth or generosity; for a person to be a pink of gentility, that is heathenism, should have no such feelings; and, indeed, the admirers of gentility seldom or never associate any such feelings with it. ❋ George Henry Borrow (1842)