"Gentlefolk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and finding a laugh for everybody and everything. Behind them stood a motley throng of sightseers, men, women, and children, for the most part citizens, but interspersed here and there with gay groups of gentlefolk, and even some who wore the bright trappings of the Court. Behind them the beggars and pickpockets plied their arduous calling; and in the rear of all, at a little distance, wandered the horses of the gentles, cropping the fresh ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... good of having been an upright, conscientious, self-respecting woman all her life long, if it only led to this utter, degrading poverty and wretchedness? She and Bunting were just past the age which gentlefolk think proper in a married couple seeking to enter service together, unless, that is, the wife happens to be a professed cook. A cook and a butler can always get a nice situation. But Mrs. Bunting was no cook. She could do all right the simple things any lodger she might get would require, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... grandmother, "they shall come here and welcome—that is, till better be. Of course, they might be more grandly lodged by the rich and the great—gentlefolk in their own station. But, first of all, they do not offer, and if they did, they are mostly without experience. To bring up children, trust an old hen who has clucked over a brood of ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... 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 asking ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... with any gentlefolk you can find to mix with. I myself have been engaged to marry a gentleman's son, and his father would have come to my party if he hadn't been away ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... on a charming look of mock offense. "We are a little bit of England set down here in the wilderness. Why should we not clothe ourselves like gentlefolk as well as our kindred and friends at home? And sure both England and Virginia have had enough of sad colored raiment. Better go like a peacock than like ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... generous and greathearted. Nor is it quite a baseless superstition after all. Other lovers are hugely interested. They strike the nicest balance between pity and approval, when they see people aping the greatness of their own sentiments. It is an understood thing in the play, that while the young gentlefolk are courting on the terrace, a rough flirtation is being carried on, and a light, trivial sort of love is growing up, between the footman and the singing chambermaid. As people are generally cast for the leading parts in their own imaginations, the reader can ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... that, however, the carriage contained a very fashionably-dressed, rich-looking lady and gentleman. Elsie could see directly that they were gentlefolk, who would never think of hurting two little children. She resolved to speak ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... miss, to go to take care of your brother!' said Patty, regarding Gwen with an awe-struck face; 'but you gentlefolk seem to be hardier to such things than us should be. And then you'll be able to speak them foreign langwidges. But it's to be hoped the cannibals won't get hold on you. I've only seen one person come back from foreign parts alive, and that was Tom ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... children, but no other certain fact. Their merits and their faults contributed alike to the ruin of the former landholders. It is true they were improvident, and easily dazzled with the sight of ready money; but they were gentlefolk besides, and that in a way which curiously unfitted them to combat Yankee craft. Suppose they have a paper to sign, they would think it a reflection on the other party to examine the terms with any great minuteness; ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dirty deck. I, who, only yesterday, had lorded it over Ephraim, as though I were a superior being. You boys who go to good schools try to learn a little humbleness. You may think your parents very fine gentlefolk; but in the world, outside a narrow class, the having gentle parents will not help one much. It may be that you, for all your birth, have neither the instincts nor the intellect to preserve the gentility your parents made for you. You are no ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... to come to an understanding with the woman who calls herself his aunt. She could hardly be induced to believe that there could be such an odd character among the gentlefolk as the one who sought their hospitality. When she found I really meant to stay on, she began to feel rather ashamed of herself. 'Mother,' said I, 'you are not going to get rid of me, even if you abuse ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... road startled her, 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 him on a strange incident which, as ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... plenty of them, and he was in truth composed of an amalgam of far baser metals than Stephen thought; but he had been born of gentle blood and reared amongst gentlefolk. He did not quite understand the cause or the amount of his companion's concern; but he could not but recognise her distress. He realised that it had followed hard upon her most generous intention towards himself. He could not, therefore, do less than try to comfort her, and he began his ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... of honor only just escaped being broken for that gypsy-girl, whom he had bought in her sixth year from encamping gypsies for two dollars and a sucking pig, now, ten years later, did not belong any more to the household, but presided at table when gentlefolk came to dinner. But she still bore that heathen name, which she had received in the reedy thicket. She ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... stubbornness and the incalculable counted for much; it was half the battle not to know you were beaten, and it is so still. Even to-day, a great nation, it seems, may still make its army the plaything of its gentlefolk, abandon important military appointments to feminine intrigue, and trust cheerfully to the homesickness and essential modesty of its influential people, and the simpler patriotism of its colonial dependencies ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... never seen finer company than now, and I have never known better days than this," responded courtier Thomas. Dorothy thought he was presuming on her condescension, and was about to tell him so when he continued: "The servants at Haddon Hall are gentlefolk compared with servants at other places where I have worked, and I desire nothing more than to find favor in Sir George's eyes. I would do anything to ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... sound and strong. True, there would be no more singing up at the house for him now or ever after, but he seemed to have grown a trifle doubtful of his voice himself the last few years, and contented himself now for the most part with the things he had sung—once upon a time—at dances and gentlefolk's parties. No, Lars Falkenberg was none so badly off. He'd his own little holding, with keep for two cows and a pig; and a wife and children he had ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... loves him still, for all he's done to her and to us. She says he'll come back yet, rich and well, and tak' her out o' service, and bring up the bairns like the sons and dochters of gentlefolk. And we—weel, we say nowt to shake her. She maybe happier thinking so, and it's a sair hard time she's had, puir lass. D'ye mind the wee lassie that was sae still till she began to know ye—the weest one of them a'? Aye? Weel, she was born six months after her faither went awa', and ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... be poor, to be hanging on the edge of things, never enough of this or that—genteel poverty. She had inherited the condition, as had her mother before her—gentlefolk who had to count the pennies. Her two sisters—really handsome girls—had married fairly well; but one lived in St. Louis and the other in Seattle, so she never saw ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... ecclesiastics in Rome to be precarious. Thus the upper stratum of society was always in a state of flux, its elements shifting according to laws of chronic uncertainty. Beneath it spread a rabble of inferior and dubious gentlefolk, living in idleness upon the favor of the Court, serving the Cardinals and Bishops in immoral and dishonest offices, selling their wives, their daughters and themselves, all eager to rise by indirect means to places of emolument.[52] ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... its Dutch windmills that twirled their sails against the sky in all directions. There was store of plate and fine linen in New York cupboards. There were good things to eat and drink in New York households. Down South the gentlefolk lived as gentlefolk lived in England, with perhaps a more lavish ostentation, a more liberal hospitality. They loved horses and dogs, horse-racing and fox-hunting, dancing, music, high living, all things that added to the enjoyment of life. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Benvenuto will devote himself to completing your chalice, and you will get two pieces done in the same time; moreover, this poor man, whom you have brought to Rome, will have the chance to be employed." The Pope, who was anxious to obtain his chalice, very willingly adopted the advice of the Milanese gentlefolk. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... church-door, and we entered the simple old edifice, which has the pavement of lettered tombstones, the sturdy pillars and low arches, and other ordinary characteristics of an English country-church. One or two pews, probably those of the gentlefolk of the neighborhood, were better furnished than the rest, but all in a modest style. Near the high altar, in the holiest place, there is an oblong, angular, ponderous tomb of blue marble, built against the wall, and surmounted by a carved canopy of the same material; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... which is the most favorable 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 t' clap me on the back, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... made up of agricultural scenes and incidents which the slightest knowledge of Wessex novels can fill in amply. There were rows of swedes, legions of dairymen, maidens to milk the lowing cows that grazed soberly upon the rich pasture, farmers speaking rough words of an uncouth dialect, and gentlefolk careless of a milkmaid's honour. But nowhere, as far as the eye could reach, was there a sign of the sheep that Bo had that morning set forth to tend for her parents. Bo had a flexuous and finely-drawn figure not unreminiscent of many a vanished knight and dame, her remote progenitors, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... The Puffles is not quite equal to the Prospers, as I can hear. But the Puffles is ladies—and gentlemen. The servants below all give it up to them that they're real gentlefolk. But—" ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... and that she was playing in the brook, or scampering over the pastures when she should be doing other things. Mrs. Thacher, perhaps unconsciously, had looked for some trace of the father's good breeding and gentlefolk fashions, but this was not a child who took kindly to needlework and pretty clothes. She was fearlessly friendly with every one; she did not seem confused even when the minister came to make his yearly parochial visitation, and as for the doctor, he might have been her own age, for all ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of his cobbler's shop, Fox beheld with righteous indignation the extravagant and insincere courtesies of the gentlefolk, and heard their exaggerated phrases of compliment. In protest against the unmeaning courtesies, he wore his hat in the presence of no matter whom, taking it off only in time of prayer. In protest against the unmeaning compliments, he addressed no man by any artificial ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... the proper thing for gentlefolk to be disorderly in the street?" a policeman said to him. "You had better go ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... appalled by the mercilessness of a destiny that had so outraged right. She was wholly innocent of having done any wrong. She had struggled through years of privation to keep herself clean and wholesome, worthy of those gentlefolk from whom she drew her blood. And earnest effort had ended at last under an overwhelming accusation—false, yet none the less fatal to her. This accusation, after soul-wearying delays, had culminated to-day in conviction. The sentence ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... not a pleasant one to linger out in. The murmur of voices, too, which the woman overheard, betokened a close conversation, in which the familiar drawl of the windmiller's dialect blended audibly with that kind of clean-clipt speaking peculiar to gentlefolk. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is yet to be seen, or part of it, for it is not now what it was, having been partly flung open to hinder other thieves from nestling in it. It is on the bank of the river Mynach, just before it joins the Rheidol. Many gentlefolk in de summer go to see ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the wealthy Roger had higher aspirations. Why should not he get interest for his money, like lords and gentlefolk? His gold had been lying idle too long; more fool he: it ought to breed money somehow, he knew that; for, like most poor men whose sole experience of investment is connected with the Lombard's golden balls, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... have had, in the first place," said Lady Randolph, counting on her fingers, "your house full; in the second, a ball, to which everybody should have been asked. On these occasions no one that could possibly be imagined to be gentlefolk should be left out. I would even stretch a point—doctors and lawyers, and so forth, go without saying, and those big brewers, you know, I always took in; and some people go as far as the 'vet.,' as they call ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... disappointment that he, the natural leader of the party, should be put to one side for an uncultivated, inexperienced Westerner. Mr. Seward possessed both experience and culture; more than this, he was a scholar, and came of a long line of gentlefolk. He had public spirit, courage, legitimate political ambition, and some of the qualities of leadership. His nature was, however, not quite large enough to stand the pressure of political disappointment nor quite elastic enough to develop rapidly under the tremendous urgency of absolutely new requirements. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... war than that which gave us our freedom come now to this 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
... with these imposing Pyrenees, every ravine of which is a landscape and every valley an Eden. To all these beauties, yours is missing; you shall be here, like Dian, the goddess of these noble forests. All our gentlefolk await you, admiring your picture on the sweetmeat-box. They are minded to hold many pleasant festivals in your honour; you may count upon having a veritable Court. Here it is that you will meet the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... great Russian novelists he alone rivals the masters of western Europe in the matter of form. In economy of means, condensation, felicity of language, and excellence of structure he surpasses all his countrymen; and "Fathers and Children" and "A House of Gentlefolk" represent his great and delicate art ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... also of admiring themselves in their habit as they lived—perhaps even lovelier than in reality—amidst their accustomed surroundings. The pleasure of a modern reader in such tales as these is enhanced by the light they throw on the household arrangements and customs of the gentlefolk of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It may be of interest to consider some of these domestic arrangements, as illustrated by stories ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... be that," Marthe said quietly; "for anyone who knows the ways of gentlefolk, as I do, could see with half an eye that you are not one of us. But they say, mademoiselle, that your brother is a friend of Robespierre, and that he is one of the ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... A couple of gentlefolk once lived in a certain part of England. (My godmother never would tell the name either of the place or the people, even if she knew it. She said one ought not to expose one's neighbours' failings more than there ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... two worlds" inherited something more than military spirit. The ancestors from which he descended formed a line of true gentlefolk. For hundreds of years they had been renowned throughout the region of their Auvergne estates for lofty character and a kindly attitude toward their humble peasant neighbors. It was only natural that this most famous representative of the line should become a valiant champion ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... guilty. The old ladies of Kings Port, like American gentlefolk everywhere, keep family matters sacredly inside the family circle. But you see, had they not told Augustus, how in the world could I have ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... think it to insult poor people, I assure you it is very wicked, and what no good person in the world would be guilty of." He then set up a great rude laugh, and I walked on and said no more. But if all gentlefolk were to behave like that family, I had rather be poor as I am, than have all their riches, if that would make me act like them.' 'Very true, Abraham,' replied his wife, 'that is what I say, and what I told Master George this morning; for to be poor, if ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... with a mocking smile; "I was only rejoicing that they were not exposed to such trials as we. Job's Chaldeans were gentlefolk ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... father stood aside? There was the Senator in the white house across the River. Well, the Senator spent the most of his time in Smelter City forty miles away, and in Washington. Then, there were the Williams of the Mission House with their only boy and eighty or a hundred Indian children; gentlefolk keeping up the amenities of refined life, spreading the contagion of beautiful example like an irrigation plot widening slowly over arid sage brush. Surely her father was held in esteem by them; and they stood for all that ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... hors d'oeuvres of his contribution. Many series of poems and papers are his, of which the best-known is that of the "Lays of a Lazy Minstrel" (begun August 28th, 1880), with their riverside idylls and love-carols; but to his hand also are to be credited "Simple Stories for Little Gentlefolk," "Holiday Haunts, by Jingle Junior on the Jaunt," "Club Carols," "Uncle Bulger's Moral Tales," "Songs of the Streets," "Rambling Rondeaux," and "Paper-knife Poems." But it is his fluent, melodious, and unpretentious verse that has made him ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann |
