Gentry Quotes

“Don't call me 'gentleman'. I work for a livin'.”
― Tamora Pierce

“A girl could never have too much jewelry or too much weaponry.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, A Kiss of Shadows

“Please, I do not wish to be rescued by a gentleman. Could you find a farmer or a shopkeep - anyone not of the gentry - and then do me a great favor of forgetting you saw me?”
― Cindy Anstey, Love, Lies and Spies

“I say, you don't know how I could raise fifty quid somehow, do you?"
"Why don't you work?"
"Work?" said young Bingo, surprised. "What, me? No, I shall have to think of some way.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves

“Laws were made to establish a gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was opposed to a territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into cultivation, the constant and interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary; and when the ground was prepared, its produce was found to be insufficient to enrich a proprietor and a farmer at the same time. The land was then naturally broken up into small portions, which the proprietor cultivated for himself. Land is the basis of an aristocracy, which clings to the soil that supports it; for it is not by privileges alone, nor by birth, but by landed property handed down from generation to generation, that an aristocracy is constituted. A nation may present immense fortunes and extreme wretchedness; but unless those fortunes are territorial, there is no true aristocracy, but simply the class of the rich and that of the poor.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“Their love of the Church was not, indeed, the effect of study or meditation. Few among them could have given any reason, drawn from Scripture or ecclesiastical history, for adhering to her doctrines, her ritual, and her polity; nor were they, as a class, by any means strict observers of that code of morality which is common to all Christian sects. But the experience of many ages proves that men may be ready to fight to the death, and to persecute without pity, for a religion whose creed they do not understand, and whose precepts they habitually disobey.”
― Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 1

“I have always thought it bad manners to let one's fingers stay too long in another man's snuffbox.”
― Anna Freeman, The Fair Fight

“You were in the trunk while they —”
This time, Gentry closed his eyes.
“Please. I’m going to have flashbacks. I don’t want flashbacks.”
Sophie couldn’t contain their amusement any longer and broke out into laughter.
“Odette, you naughty girl!”
“I didn’t know he was back there!” She didn’t turn around. Odette didn’t want to see the look on Sophie’s face.
“If I did, I wouldn’t have climbed into Keahi’s lap in the first place!”
“Okay!,” Gentry said. “I don’t need visuals, either.”
― Tovaley B. Kysel, The Scion Princess

“Be the flower in the vase, and the viper at the base.”
― Glenn Hefley

“Our peers and gentrie were content
To bide at hame and spend their rent:
But now to travel they are bent
Baith ane and a';
And cracks their credit ere they stint,
Sin' Wont's awa.”
― Alexander Nicol, The Rural Muse; or, A Collection of Miscellany Poems, both Comical and Serious

“No cooking will be required today,' said Uncle Ambrose airily. Merely cold meat and salad and so on. I hope to spend the day writing in my library, but shall be available for consultation if required.'
He left the kitchen with a light and happy tread, for it wasn't often these days that he could devote many consecutive hours to writing, but Ezra sighed. The gentry always seemed to think that cold meat and potato salad and orange jelly fell already chilled from heaven. They failed to grasp the fact that meat has to be hot before it is cold and jelly liquid before it solidifies.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, Linnets and Valerians