Source: Dorian
“Tact is the ability to step on a man's toes without messing up the shine on his shoes.”
“The Landlord is a gentleman … who does not earn his wealth.”
Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 150-151.
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Context: Who is the landlord? The Landlord is a gentleman … who does not earn his wealth. He does not even take the trouble to receive his wealth. He has a host of agents and clerks that receive it for him. He does not even take the trouble to spend his wealth. He has a host of people around him to do the actual spending for him. He never sees it until he comes to enjoy it. His sole function, his chief pride is stately consumption of wealth produced by others.
“I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.”
Estranha gente, para quem é fora de dúvida que ninguém pode ser moral sem ler a Bíblia, ser forte sem jogar o críquete e ser gentleman sem ser inglês! E é isto que os torna detestados. Nunca se fundem, nunca se desinglesam.
"Os Ingleses no Egipto"; "The English in Egypt" pp. 159-60.
Cartas de Inglaterra (1879–82)
“You must be a bastard for I knew your mother's husband and he was a gentleman and honest man.”
In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens
“During the Calciopoli scandal: "A true gentleman never leaves his lady."”
http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2005/settembre/01/sfida_piu_difficile_Alex_Del_co_8_050901011.shtml
Attributed
Lord Illingworth, Act I
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
“The only thing black people can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my music.”
Misattributed in "He wasn't my king" by Helen Kolawole http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/elvis/story/0,12333,774842,00.html in The Guardian (15 August 2002) apparently citing an unsourced anecdote, that has been debunked in Counterpunch (29 August 2002) http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn0829.html which cites an article in Jet magazine (1 August 1957):
"Tracing that rumored racial slur to its source was like running a gopher to earth", Jet wrote. Some said Presley had said it in in Boston, which Elvis had never visited. Some said it was on Edward Murrow's on which Elvis had never appeared. Jet sent Louie Robinson to the set of Jailhouse Rock "When asked if he ever made the remark, Missisissippi-born Elvis declared: 'I never said anything like that, and people who know me know I wouldn't have said it.'"
More on this misattribution at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/presley1.asp
Misattributed
