Hugh Leonard Quotes

Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal.

As a general rule, do not kick the shins of the opposite gentleman under the table, if personally unaquainted with him; your pleasantry is liable to be misunderstood--a circumstance at all times unpleasant.

I was always the Southern gentleman.

I don't really believe in rules, but I do like old-fashioned dating where you don't call the guy until he calls you. I don't think it's like he's got to do this and that's the rule.

A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

Tipping your hat to a lady is good form. If you're at a dinner table, you'd most certainly take your hat off - cowboy hat, baseball hat, or otherwise.

Gone are the days when a gentleman lightly took your hand in his and brushed his lips across it, or tipped his hat to acknowledge you as he chivalrously stepped aside to let you pass.

Every member present must behave like a gentleman, and those who are not must try to.

Gentlemen don't do that.

A gentleman should never take his hat off with a flourish.

A gentleman doesn't pounce he glides. If a woman sits on a piece of furniture which permits your sitting beside her, you are free to regard this as an invitation, though not an unequivocal one.

I read all the books I could find about manners, and the extraordinary thing was, in all books up to the end of the Second World War, most were directed at how to comport yourself in the presence of the ladies.

Good manners are a sign of strength.

The chivalrous man who holds a door open or signals a woman to go ahead of him when he's driving is negotiating both status and connection.

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

Life is livable because we know that wherever we go most of the people we meet will be restrained in their actions towards us by an almost instinctive network of taboos.

From its earliest beginnings, golf has been a gentleman's game - to be played as much for the sake of the game as for the contest.

To rage and mock is gentlemanly, to grumble and whine is not.

I think that being a gentleman is what matters; taking them out to a nice dinner, open the doors, stuff like that.

Either way, everything will be fine. But if you have an opinion, please feel free to offer it to me through the gap in the door of a public restroom. Everyone else does.

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

You can take off your hats now, gentlemen, and I think perhaps you'd better.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

In my day, there were things that were done, and things that were not done, and there was even a way of doing things that were not done.

Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.