Among the glories of Western civilization stands the Victorian gentleman. Surely, the gentleman, a quasi-aristocrat whose good manners came from culture not from genes, did not originate in Victorian England. Moliere made fun of the French version in the seventeenth century, and Confucius, around 500 B.C. extolled the studied civic virtue of this social creature.
But, who better to define the essence of the Victorian gentleman than Oscar Wilde: "A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally."
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