Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.

In the '60s, I thought golf was bourgeois, so I didn't play at all for 20 years.

A gentleman is calm and spacious: the vulgar are always fretting.

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

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.

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

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.

I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity.

My husband's family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven.

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

Being cultured is the least expensive form of respectability.

The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom.

About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman's education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.

The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.

People will think you're courting me.' 'Nonsense, everyone knows I don't court respectable women.

Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.

In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you.

Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by lifting his head high, can pretend that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down on him from above.

Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe, to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals.

The same amount of pride which makes a man treat haughtily his inferiors, makes him cringe servilely; to those above him.

Do not choose for your friends and familiar acquaintance those that are of an estate or quality too much above yours...You will hereby accustom yourselves to live after their rate in clothes, in habit, and in expenses, whereby you will learn a fashion and rank of life above your degree and estate, which will in the end be your undoing.

Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?

Surely, it is much easier to respect a man who has always had respect, than to respect a man who we know was last year no better than ourselves, and will be no better next year.

It is claimed that the United States gets the cleanest and purest tea in the market, and certainly it is too good to warrant the nervous apprehension which strains and dilutes it into nothingness. The English do not strain their tea in the fervid fashion we do. They like to see a few leaves dawdling about the cup. They like to know what they are drinking.