“There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles II. But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen.”
Vol. I, ch. 2
History of England (1849–1861)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay 101
British historian and Whig politician 1800–1859Related quotes
“His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen.”
Pt. I, line 645. Compare: Julius Hare, Guesses at Truth: "A Christian is God Almighty’s gentleman"; Edward Young, Night Thoughts, Night iv, line 788, "A Christian is the highest style of man".
The Hind and the Panther (1687)
Report on the Battle of Lake Erie (13 September 1813)
Context: Those officers and men who were immediately under my observation, evinced the greatest gallantry, and I have no doubt that all others conducted themselves as became American officers and seamen. Lieutenant Yarnall, first of the LAWRENCE, although several times wounded, refused to quit the deck. Midshipman Forrest (doing duty as lieutenant) and sailing master Taylor, were of great assistance to me.
“They were gentlemen in the full sense of the word; and what has one not said in saying this?”
Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 17
Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977), p. 84
Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 34
Context: Our preceptors were gentlemen as well as scholars. There was not a grain of sentimentalism in the institution; on the other hand, the place was permeated by a profound sense of justice. … An equalitarian and democratic regime must by consequence assume, tacitly or avowedly, that everybody is educable. The theory of our regime was directly contrary to this. Our preceptors did not see that doctrines of equality and democracy had any footing in the premises. They did not pretend to believe that everyone is educable, for they knew, on the contrary, that very few are educable, very few indeed. They saw this as a fact of nature, like the fact that few are six feet tall. … They accepted the fact that there are practicable ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience which nature has opened to some and closed to others.
Speech in the House of Commons (6 March 1741), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), p. 10.