Gentry Quotes

I come from a class which used to be called the gentry - which is nowadays mistakenly used to include the nobility, but in fact is not. The gentry was essentially the untitled landowning class.

The enjoyment of civil rights, would be best and soonest obtained if every county in the land were made a little Commonwealth and their chief town a city, where the nobility and chief gentry may build houses or palaces, befitting their quality, may bear part in the government, make their own judicial laws and execute them by their elected judicatures without appeal in all things of civil government between man and man.

People tend to assume that I come from a long line of castle-dwelling gentry and am made of money.

The tradesmen are the only gentry in England.

I think the concept of polo that people had in the 1920s and the 1930s was much more accurate, when going to a polo match was seen as a great day out and great fun on a more popular level.

In France … the Gentry who may possess Lands, live in good condition, though the Peasants are little better then Slaves, because they can possess nothing but at the will of others.

Our ideas of the life and business of a soldier were drawn chiefly from the adventures of Ivanhoe and Charles O'Malley, two worthies with whose personal history almost every man in the army was familiar. The men who volunteered went to war of their own accord, and were wholly unaccustomed to acting on any other than their own motion…. Their officers were of themselves, chosen by election, and subject, by custom, to enforced resignation upon petition of the men…. There was one sort of rank, however, which was both maintained and respected from the first, namely, that of social life. The line of demarkation between gentry and common people … rests … upon an indeterminate something or other, known as family. To come of a good family is a patent of nobility, and there is no other way whatever by which any man or any woman can find a passage into the charmed circle.

Polo is a quintessentially English sport. It stands for quality and sophistication and is recognised all over the world as such.