Jean de La Fontaine Quotes

Somebody has said, that a king may make a nobleman but he cannot make a gentleman.

I am regarded as a usurper, as an imposter and dilettante, because I do technically come from the wrong side of the tracks in musical terms.

A gentleman never talks about his tailor.

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

A rich rogue nowadays is fit company for any gentleman; and the world, my dear, hath not such a contempt for roguery as you imagine.

I was brought up to be a gentleman. That means you know how to walk, talk and dress the part.

An English merchant is a new species of gentleman.

If I may venture to be frank I would say about myself that I was every inch a gentleman.

You see, among men who are honored with the common appellation ogentleman, many contradictions to that character.

I'll do business with anyone, but I'll only go sailing with gentlemen.

After all, there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose class no dirt or rags can hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the gentleman--by whom I do not mean just now the rich--have the superiority in that point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air, water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this "haggardness," this "coarseness" (etc., for the list is too long to specify), be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people.

We must be gentle now we are gentlemen.

He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.

The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people.

We may daily discover crowds acquire sufficient wealth to buy gentility, but very few that possess the virtues which ennoble human nature, and (in the best sense of the word) constitute a gentleman.

Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing behaviour of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes.

The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.

The poor live slow and hard; the rich, fast and easy. The rest of us shuffle along as we may.

If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says.

Those who seek to impress upon us that they are gentlemen will usually be found mistaken.

In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.

Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

You’re a gentleman,” they used to say to him. “You shouldn’t have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that’s no occupation for a gentleman.