Oh! St. Patrick was a gentleman,
Who came of decent people. [ Henry Bennett ]
Manners and money make a gentleman. [ Proverb ]
An insolent lord is not a gentleman. [ Proverb ]
He is gentle that doth gentle deeds. [ Chaucer ]
What is a gentleman but his pleasure? [ Proverb ]
The gentleman is a Christian product. [ George H. Calvert ]
An affable and courteous gentleman. . [ William Shakespeare ]
You put the clown above the gentleman. [ Proverb ]
The prince of darkness is a gentleman. [ Marlowe ]
Manners and learning make a gentleman. [ Proverb ]
A Christian is God Almighty's gentleman. [ Hare ]
His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen. [ Dryden ]
Since every Jack became a gentleman,
There's many a gentle person made a Jack. [ William Shakespeare, Richard III ]
He that bears himself like a gentleman, is
Worth to have been born a gentleman. [ Chapman ]
A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Starch makes the gentleman, etiquette the lady. [ Brummel ]
For through the south the custom still commands
The gentleman to kiss the lady's hands. [ Byron ]
A vicious gentleman has a blot in his 'scutcheon. [ Proverb ]
A gentleman ought to travel abroad but dwell at home. [ Proverb ]
It is not the fine coat that makes the fine gentleman. [ Proverb ]
Jack would be a gentleman if he could but speak French. [ Proverb ]
He that would be a gentleman, let him go to an assault. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
A gentleman without an estate is a pudding without suet. [ Proverb ]
What we call a gentleman is no longer the man of nature. [ Diderot ]
A gentleman's first characteristic is fineness of nature. [ John Ruskin ]
To a gentleman every woman is a lady in right of her sex.
Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him. [ Proverb ]
He is the best gentleman who is the son of his own deserts. [ Victor Hugo ]
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature. [ Diderot ]
A gentleman should have more in his pocket than on his back. [ Proverb ]
He is the best dressed gentleman whose dress no one observes. [ Trollope ]
The clown in his own country, the gentleman where he pleases. [ Spanish Proverb ]
A gentleman's greyhound and a salt box, seek them at the fire. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
More goes to the making of a fine gentleman than fine clothes. [ Proverb ]
Modest assurance, good humour, and prudence, make a gentleman. [ Proverb ]
A thief passes for a gentleman, when stealing has made him rich. [ Proverb ]
The word of a gentleman is as good as his bond - sometimes better. [ Dickens ]
That gentleman who sells an acre of land, sells an ounce of credit. [ Lord Burleigh ]
I am myself a gentleman of the press, and have no other escutcheon. [ Beaconsfield ]
In a word, to be a fine gentleman is to be a generous and brave man. [ Steele ]
The gentleman is solid mahogany; the fashionable man is only veneer. [ J. G. Holland, Pseudonym: Timothy Titcomb ]
A coxcomb is ugly all over with the affectation of the fine gentleman. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Knowledge begins a gentleman, but it is conversation that completes him. [ Proverb ]
Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman - repose in energy. [ Emerson ]
To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber. [ Goldsmith ]
There is no man that can teach us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison. [ Thackeray ]
Uncertain whose the narrowest span, - the clown unread, or half-read gentleman. [ Dryden ]
If a gentleman be to study any language, it ought to be that of his own country. [ Locke ]
Gentleman, in its primal, literal, and perpetual meaning, is a man of pure race. [ John Ruskin ]
Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman. [ Herbert Spencer ]
Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman. [ Hazlitt ]
He is a worthy gentleman, exceedingly well read and profited in strange concealments. [ Shakespeare ]
The look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world. [ Hazlitt ]
A man can never be a true gentleman in manner, until he is a true gentleman at heart. [ Charles Dickens ]
When a gentleman is disposed to swear it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths. [ William Shakespeare ]
How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after. [ William Shakespeare ]
Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and education must finish him. [ Locke ]
It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave than to expend it like a gentleman. [ Colton ]
Education begins the gentleman, but leading, good company, and reflection must finish him. [ Locke ]
It is a reproach to be the first gentleman of his race, but it is a greater to be the last. [ Proverb ]
The lawyer is a gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies, and keeps it to himself. [ Brougham ]
One's duty as a gentleman should never interfere with one's pleasures in the slightest degree. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them. [ Emerson ]
It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot. [ Chapin ]
A gentleman that loves to hear himself talk will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet ]
Gentleman is a term which does not apply to any station, but to the mind and the feelings in every station. [ Talfourd ]
If a man is a gentleman he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman whatever he knows is bad for him. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
He is the best gentleman that is the son of his own deserts, and not the degenerated heir of another's virtue. [ Victor Hugo ]
Coolness, and absence of heat and haste, indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise, a lady is serene. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
A society of people will cursorily represent a certain culture, though there is not a gentleman or a lady in the group. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
I never knew the old gentleman with the scythe and hour-glass bring anything but gray hairs, thin cheeks, and loss of teeth. [ Dryden ]
A gentleman is always a gentleman; but the butterflies of society differ as much in their moods as does that insect in its colors. [ Mme. Dufresnoy ]
The taste of beauty and the relish of what is decent, just, and amiable perfects the character of the gentleman and the philosopher. [ Shaftesbury ]
That man will never be a perfect gentleman who lives only with gentlemen. To be a man of the world we must view that world in every grade and in every perspective. [ Bulwer Lytton ]
If you make a law against dancing-masters imitating the fine gentleman, you should with as much reason enact, that no fine gentleman shall imitate the dancing-master. [ Goldsmith ]
Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style. [ Colton ]
Profaneness is a brutal vice. He who indulges in it is no gentleman, I care not what his stamp may be in society; I care not what clothes be wears, or what culture he boasts. [ Chapin ]
Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman - repose in energy. The Greek battle pieces are calm; the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect. [ Emerson ]
Health - the silliest word in our language, and one knows the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
As the air and manner of a gentleman can be acquired only by living habitually in the best society, so grace in composition must be attained by an habitual acquaintance with classical writers. [ Dugald Stewart ]
Fame confers a rank above that of gentleman and of kings. As soon as she issues her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or of it tallow-chandler. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
Irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it pointblank, he implies it in the politest terms he can invent. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
The sluices of the grog-shop are fed from the wine-glasses in the parlor, and there is a lineal descent from the gentleman who hiccoughs at his elegant dinner-table to the sot who makes a bed of the gutter. [ E. H. Chapin, D.D ]
He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank. [ Colton ]
Dress has a moral effect upon the conduct of mankind. Let any gentleman find himself with dirty boots, old surtout, soiled neckcloth and a general negligence of dress, and he will in all probability find a corresponding disposition by negligence of address. [ Sir Jonah Barrington ]
A gentleman's taste in dress is, upon principle, the avoidance of all things extravagant. It consists in the quiet simplicity of exquisite neatness; but, as the neatness must be a neatness in fashion, employ the best tailor; pay him ready money, and, on the whole, you will find him the cheapest. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
A prolific source of obscurity is ambiguous arrangement. A member of the Savage Club, so runs the story, was one day standing on the steps of the club house. A messenger stopped and inquired: Does a gentleman belong to your club with one eye named Walker?
I don't know,
was the answer, what was the name of his other eye?
[ Sir J. F. Stephen, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]
If you love music, hear it; go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you. But I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself; it puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light; brings him into a great deal of bad company, and takes up a great deal of time which might be much better employed. [ Chesterfield ]