gentilities

In his subtle capacity for enjoying the more refined points of earth, of human relationship, he could throw the gleam of poetry or humour on what seemed common or threadbare; has a care for the [120] sighs, and the weary, humdrum preoccupations of very weak people, down to their little pathetic "gentilities," even; while, in the purely human temper, he can write of death, almost like Shakespeare.

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style Walter Pater 1866

Bumping up against the gentilities of opera and operetta were vaudeville, burlesque, the revue, the spectacle and the songs of Tin Pan Alley.

"Showtime," Larry Stempel's history of Broadway musicals, reviewed by Lloyd Rose Lloyd Rose 2010

Bumping up against the gentilities of opera and operetta were vaudeville, burlesque, the revue, the spectacle and the songs of Tin Pan Alley.

"Showtime," Larry Stempel's history of Broadway musicals, reviewed by Lloyd Rose Lloyd Rose 2010

Sometimes she spoke regretfully of the gentilities of her early life, and instead of comparing her present state with her condition as the wife of the unlucky Hall, she mused rather on what it had been before she took the first fatal step of clandestinely marrying him.

Wessex Tales 2006

Visions of good and ill breeding, of old vulgarisms and new gentilities, were before her; and she was meditating much upon silver forks, napkins, and finger – glasses.

Mansfield Park 2004

In spite of his assertion to the contrary when I talked to him years ago, he is ready to converse with unbelievers, and he is not disagreeable to Jews; and he makes fun of all the old gentilities that he otherwise pretends to represent.

Edmund Wilson On Writers and Writing Wilson, Edmund 1977

Laphams are all the more interesting because they display no feeble and tentative gentilities.

Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 Various

Perhaps the movement toward a harsher realism, an avowed naturalism, should hardly be called a reaction, proceeding as it did not so much by a return to some earlier mode as by an advance to a new idiom of actuality; still it indicated a temperamental reaction from the gentilities of the established school.

Chapter 10. Reaction and Progress. Section I. Toward the Right: Rococo Romance 1921

She buckled on her spurs for new conquest, and left the already vanquished gentilities of Norton Bury to amuse themselves as they best might.

John Halifax, Gentleman 1897

The baby had a big precedent, but although no peculiar shame attaches to the bare pinnacle of the summit, she -- despite the difference in size and age -- was expected to show up more fully furnished, and in keeping with the rule of humanity and the gentilities of life.

The Riddle Of The Rocks 1895 Mary Noailles Murfree 1886