French gentleman

“ Why, do you think that the young gentleman when he comes, will not instantly turn his back upon you, when he sees you ogling his hand with one eye, and his foot with the other at the same moment!’—It is currently reported that the young heir speaks French remarkably well: so there is such a parlezvouing, and chattering in every house from morning to night, as makes your ears tingle all the time you are within hearing. ”

“ In France, what is required of a gentleman is high education and refined manners. A peasant's son possessing these is received in any society.
In England, boys begin swaggering about their social position as soon as they leave the nursery, and if you would have some fun, you should follow groups of public school-boys in the playground or on their way home. ”

“ So shy indeed are we English of letting a stranger into our houses, that one would imagine we regarded all such as thieves. Now the French are the very reverse. Being a stranger among them entitles you to the better place, and to the greater degree of civility; and if you wear but the appearance of a gentleman, they never suspect you are not one. ”

“ The French and the American women call on you and, when they think they have stayed long enough, they shake hands and go. The British matron 'thinks' or 'is afraid she must be about going.'
What you have achieved does not amount to much to make a gentleman of you in her eyes. If your father is a gentleman, you may be in it; if, besides, your grandfather was a gentleman, then you will be of it. ”

“ I need not tell you that I gave him a vigorous Yankee hand-shaking. He left America a year ago to take possession of an inherited property. Moral: Consider every man, everywhere, a gentleman, until you have proof that he is not. A Frenchman never sits when a lady in his presence stands, nor does he ever smoke or expectorate in a lady’s presence. Do the Americans? A French lady asked me, and I had to say with humility, ‘Yes.’ After this little incident my friends appeared, more worried about me than I about them, and we soon took ‘top seats’ on steam-cars and were carried to Versailles. ”

“ The Fine Gentleman.—What the French justly call les manières nobles, are only to be acquired in the very best companies. They are the distinguishing characteristics of men of fashion: people of low education never wear them so close, but that some part or other of the original vulgarism appears. Les manières nobles equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy. ”

“ It will be very easy for you, however, gentlemen, to place the note before the Chevalier, and make him explain it himself. Though an unfortunate gentleman, he is still a gentleman of honour, and will tell you the truth. ”

“ In France, you know, it is not difficult for a gentleman, no matter what his means may be, to mix with a class that in England would not welcome a poor man, unless he were a singer, who came to amuse them, or something of that kind. ”

“ There appears, moreover, in France, to be a sort of blending together of the high and low ranks of society, which has a bad effect on the more polite, without at all bettering the manners of the more uncivilized. To discover who are gentlemen, and who are not, without previously knowing something of them, or at least entering into conversation, is very difficult. In England, all the middling ranks dress so well, that you are puzzled to find out the gentleman. In France, they dress so ill in the higher ranks, that you cannot distinguish them from the lower. ”

“ Now, however, the proper style is to say: 'I take the liberty to salute Monsieur So-and-so,' to which the answer is: 'Je vous en prie monsieur.' 'Never,' says our author, 'appear to see any one who is looking out of his window or door, both improper practices, especially the latter.' When a gentleman speaks to one much older than himself, or to a lady, he not only raises his hat quite off his head—for none 'but an ignorant boor or a fier Anglais' ever does otherwise—but holds it in his hand until requested to replace it. ”

“ As it was, no English gentleman ever approached him with the common forms of introduction, that did not come away at once surprised and charmed by the kind courtesy of his manners, the unpretending play of his conversation, and on nearer intercourse the frank, youthful spirits, to the flow of which he gave way with such zest as to produce the impression that gaiety was after all the true bent of his disposition. ”

“ He saw, from his face, and air, and manner, that he was bred a gentleman. Shall we ever come—or rather the twentieth generation come—to the time when every man of England (but for his own fault) shall be bred and trained a gentleman in the true and glorious sense of it? ”

“ For this reason the character of gentleman, in the sense to which I have confined it, is frequent in England, rare in France, and found, where it is found, in age or the latest period of manhood; while in Germany the character is almost unknown. But the proper antipode of a gentleman is to be sought for among the Anglo-American democrats. ”

“ In revenge, they shall have the most comfortable chairs, and talk from morning to night. Now, if my plan of Paradise does not suit people, they have only to form one according to their own fancy. I cannot tell you what great kindness I have received from everybody, or the charming notes and the too charming speeches. I am sure the French well deserve their character for amiability and politeness, or, I really should rather say, kindness. ”

“ I'm as democratic as they make 'em, but it is an undoubted fact that there are strains of men, just as there are strains of animals. Considered as a strain of mankind, a gentleman is a gentleman, no matter how big a rascal he is. The Frenches are all gentlemen—that is, all but Blake. ”

“ High and low, rich and poor, mutually respect each other’s feelings without reference to the wealth or social status of either; and this is after all the essence of what constitutes the true gentleman. ”

“ The gentleman is no longer the creature of the tailor’s hands—the being of his shop-board. The gentleman must dress himself in ease, in affability, in the gentler and calmer courtesies of life, to make distinguishable the nobility of his nature from the homeliness, the vulgarity of the very man who, it may be, finds nobility in shoe-leather. Thus, gentility of blood, deprived by innovation of its external livery—denied the outward marks of supremacy—is thrown upon its bare self to make good its prerogative. ”

“ APPRENTICE TAILOR: My dear gentleman.
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: My dear gentleman! That's what it is to dress like people of quality! Go all your life dressed like a bourgeois and they'll never call you "My dear gentleman." Here, take this for the "My dear gentleman." ”

“ Perhaps more than any people, as I see them now, the French require the restraint of good manners. They are desirous of pleasing, it is true; but their amour propre is so sensitive, and their tempers so quick, that they are easily betrayed into anger and vehemence. ”

“ In short, the gentlemanly character arises out of the feeling of equality acting as a habit, yet flexible to the varieties of rank, and modified without being disturbed or superseded by them." Definitions of a gentleman are numerous, and some of them famous ”

“ You see no longer in France that noble air, that "great manner," as it was called, by which the old nobility strove to keep up the distinction between themselves and their worse-born associates to the last, and which of course those associates assiduously imitated.
That manner is gone: the French, so far from being a polite nation at the present day, want that easiness of behavior which is the first essential to politeness. Every man you meet is occupied with maintaining his dignity, and talks to you of his position. ”

“ The term gentleman is, perhaps, one of the most indefinite in the English language. George IV prided himself in being the finest gentleman in Europe; every peer of the realm is a gentleman; every judge, member of parliament, and magistrate is a gentleman; every clergyman, lawyer, and doctor is a gentleman; every merchant and tradesman is a gentleman; every farmer and mechanic is a gentleman; every draper’s errand-boy and tailor’s apprentice is a gentleman ”

“ What fact more conspicuous in modern history, than the creation of the gentleman? Chivalry is that, and loyalty is that, and, in English literature, half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure. The word gentleman, which, like the word Christian, must hereafter characterize the present and the few preceding centuries, by the importance attached to it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable properties. ”

“ Politeness and good manners, indeed, may be traced, though in different proportions, through every rank, from the greatest of the nobility to the lowest mechanic. This forms a more remarkable and distinguishing feature in the French national character, than the vivacity, impetuosity, and fickleness, for which the ancient as well as the modern inhabitants of this country have been noted.—It certainly is a very singular phænomenon, that politeness, which in every other country is confined to people of a certain rank in life, should here pervade every situation and profession. ”

“ Here he put off the gown and wig of a barrister, and played the part of a country gentleman. He rode about accompanied by his children and his friends, and followed by his dogs. He fished, and walked, and learned to know every one around, high and low. He was beloved by all the countryside, for he was kindly and courteous to all, and was "aye the gentleman." He would sit and talk with a poor man in his cottage, listening to his tales of long ago, with the same ease and friendliness as he would entertain the great in his own beautiful house. ”

“ Believe that politeness is the ruling characteristic of the country because a man kisses your hand when he takes leave of you. But marry him, and no insult as regards other women is too low for him to heap upon you. Believe that the French men are sympathetic because they laugh and cry openly at the theatre. But appeal to their chivalry, and they will rescue you from one discomfort only to offer you a worse. The French have sentimentality, but not sentiment. They have gallantry, but not chivalry. They have vanity, but not pride. They have religion, but not morality. ”

“ Do you really think that gentlemanly creature in the Laureate's epic—that most polished and perfect and most intensely modern English gentleman, self-contained, considerate of others, always the right man in the right place—is one whit like that half-naked sixth century savage—the real Arthur—whose Court costume was a coat of blue paint, and whose war-shriek was the yell of a Red Indian? ”

“ He’s tall, active, erect,” I continued, “but never—no, never!—a gentleman.”
My companion’s face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. “A gentleman?” she gasped, confounded, stupefied: “a gentleman he?” ”

“ Hang it all, a gentleman can't be expected to earn his own livelihood. England's going to the dogs, that's where it is; no snug little sinecures left for chaps like you and me; all this beastly competition. ”

“ He subjects his appetites, refines his tastes, subdues his feelings, controls his speech, and deems every other person as good as himself. A gentleman, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before he is glazed. ”

“ And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look'ee here, to know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood horses of them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was walking; what do I say? I says to myself, 'I'm making a better gentleman nor ever you'll be! When one of 'em says to another, 'He was a convict, a few year ago, and is a ignorant common fellow now, for all he's lucky what do I say? I says to myself, 'If I ain't a gentleman, nor yet ain't got no learning, I'm the owner of such. All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up London gentleman? ”

“ In the last chapter have been exhibited specimens of gentility, so considered by different classes; by one class power, youth, and epaulets are considered the ne plus ultra of gentility; by another class pride, stateliness, and title; by another, wealth and flaming tawdriness. But what constitutes a gentleman? It is easy to say at once what constitutes a gentleman, and there are no distinctions in what is gentlemanly, [5] as there are in what is genteel. ”

“ He is the honest man who observes them with the most exactness, and the instances of them multiply in proportion to the degree of nicety of a person's honor."
Originally a gentleman was defined to be one who, without any title of nobility, wore a coat of arms. ”

“ A gentleman entered, with a pleasant, cultured face, high-nosed and pale, with something perhaps of petulance about the mouth, and with the steady, well-opened eye of a man whose pleasant lot it had ever been to command and to be obeyed. ”

“ The dictionaries and the students of words have a great deal to say,--perhaps more than is worth while,--of the origin of the word Gentleman,--whether a gentleman in England and a gentilhomme in France mean the same thing, and so on. The really interesting thing is that in a republic where a man's a man, the gentleman is not created by dictionaries or by laws. ”

“ The characteristics of a gentleman are high feeling—a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of another—a liberal education—absence of narrow views—generosity and courage, propriety of behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess one of the characteristics of a gentleman. Is the emperor a gentleman, with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble Hungarian women? Are the aristocracy gentlefolks, who admire him? Is Mr. Flamson a gentleman, although he has a million pounds? ”

“ The gentleman bowed, distantly enough, and said he was obliged to him.
‘We poor gentlemen, sir,’ said the traveller, pulling his moustache dry with his hand, for he had dipped it in the wine and brandy; ‘we poor gentlemen do not travel like princes, but the courtesies and graces of life are precious to us. ”