Old Chivalry Quotes & Sayings

I still like to see that a man opens the door. I like those touches of chivalry that are fast disappearing. If I sound old-fashioned, it's because I'm as old as I am! But it's just polite. — Betty White

You remind me of an old cat I once had. Whenever he killed a mouse he would bring it into the drawing-room and lay it affectionately at my feet. I would reject the corpse with horror and turn him out, but back he would come with his loathsome gift. I simply couldn't make him understand that he was not doing me a kindness. He thought highly of his mouse and it was beyond him to realize that I did not want it.
You are just the same with your chivalry. It's very kind of you to keep offering me your dead mouse; but honestly I have no use for it. I won't take favors just because I happen to be a female. — P.G. Wodehouse

So don't preach at us like you're some kind of saint. You're just another sinner. — Rachel Caine

While our men seem thoroughly abreast of the times on almost every other subject, when they strike the woman question they drop back into sixteenth century logic. They leave nothing to be desired generally in regard to gallantry and chivalry, but they actually do not seem sometimes to have outgrown that old contemporary of chivalry
the idea that women may stand on pedestals or live in doll houses, ... but they must not furrow their brows with thought or attempt to help men tug at the great questions of the world. — Anna Julia Cooper

Gentlemen, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color. — Louisa May Alcott

I stepped forward. Call me old-fashioned, but I wanted to keep his focus on me and not Annabeth. I think it's polite for a guy to protect his girlfriend from instant incineration. — Rick Riordan

The plain of Bedegraine was a forest of pavilions. They looked like old-fashioned bathing tents, and were every colour of the rainbow ... There were heraldic devices worked or stamped on the sides ... Then there were pennons floating from the tops of the tents, and sheaves of spears leaning against them. The more sporting barons had shields or huge copper basins outside their front doors, and all you had to do was to give a thump on one of these with the butt-end of your spear, for the baron to come out like an angry bee and have a fight with you, almost before the resounding boom had died away. Sir Dinadain, who was a cheerful man, had hung a chamber-pot outside his. — T.H. White

I'm a little old-fashioned in some ways, and that carries over to this arrangement. Call it outdated chivalry, but there are some places I don't feel women should go. Not because they aren't intelligent or able. I just feel there is a certain respect with which a lady should be treated." "Are you saying there are places you'd take — Brandon Mull

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name". Do not then (concludes the Stoic) take good words in your mouth, and prate before applauding citizens of honour, duty, and so forth, while you make your private lives a mere selfish calculation of expediency. We were surely born for nobler ends than this, and none who is worthy the name of a man would subscribe to doctrines which destroy all honour and all chivalry. The heroes of old time won their immortality not by weighing pleasures and pains in the balance, but by being prodigal of their lives, doing and enduring all things for the sake of their fellow-men. — W. Lucas Collins

You never know if they like you for who you are or what you are. Would he love me or the money? — Anna Nicole Smith

The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization. — Lytton Strachey

For I am inclined to believe that my beloved Arthur of the future is sitting at this very moment among his learned freinds, in the Combination Room of the College of Life, and that they are thinking away in there for all they are worth, about the best means to help our curious species: and I for one hope that some day, when not only England but the World has need of them, and when it is ready to listen to reason, if it ever is, they will issue forth from their rath in joy and power: and then perhaps, they will give us happiness in the world once more and chivalry, and the old medieval blessing of certain simple people - who tried, at any rate, in their own small way, to still the ancient brutal dream of Attila the Hun. — T.H. White

Take the situation of a scientist solving a problem, where he has certain data, which call for certain responses. Some of this set of data call for his applying such and such a law, while others call for another law. — George Herbert Mead

You might belong in Gryffindor,
Where dwell the brave at heart,
Their daring, nerve, and chivalry,
Set Gryffindors apart;
You might belong in Hufflepuff,
Where they are just and loyal,
Those patient Hufflepuffs are true,
And unafraid of toil;
Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,
If you've a ready mind,
Where those of wit and learning,
Will always find their kind;
Or perhaps in Slytherin,
You'll make your real friends,
These cunning folks use any means
To achieve their ends. — J.K. Rowling

Iris released a sigh. 'Honestly, Ruby. we've been over this a hundred times in the past day. Bram and Miss Plum will not be getting married. Your brother was simply being chivalrous, something he tends to do on a far too frequent basis.'
'You say that as if chivalry is not a welcome trait for a gentleman to have,' Ruby said slowly 'Why, having been involved with a gentleman who turned out to have not a single chivalrous bone in his body, I can well attest to the allure that an old-fashioned gentleman with old-fashioned values has to a woman in these trying times.'
'Hear, hear. — Jen Turano

...in principle, one can predict everything in the universe solely from physical laws. Thus, the long-standing 'first cause' problem intrinsic in cosmology has been finally dispelled. — Li Zhi Fang

When you become a slave to a public persona and don't feel comfortable without it, it becomes a shield, and it shouldn't come at the expense of your self-worth. — Gugu Mbatha-Raw

The benefit of planningis not so much the plan (or plans) itself is as the effect of having to think through the circumstances you're about to experience, consider them and make rational, reasoned decisions based upon them. — Kevin Evans

No, no, it's not me, it's them - that old time that I've tried to have live in me. These were just men, unimportant evidently or they wouldn't have been 'unknown'; but they died for the most beautiful thing in the world - the dead South. You see," she continued, her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears, "people have these dreams they fasten onto things, and I've always grown up with that dream. It was so easy because it was all dead and there weren't any disillusions comin' to me. I've tried in a way to live up to those past standards of noblesse oblige - there's just the last remnants of it, you know, like the roses of an old garden dying all round us - streaks of strange courtliness and chivalry in some of these boys an' stories I used to hear from a Confederate soldier who lived next door, and a few old darkies. Oh, Harry, there was something, there was something! I couldn't ever make you understand but it was there. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Defend the weak, protect both young and old, never desert your friends. Give justice to all, be fearless in battle and always ready to defend the right.
- The law of Badger Lords — Brian Jacques

While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had originally felt about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of his disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference. If Cadwallader-- if every one else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the marriage might have been hindered. It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had a chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet odors-- floating memories that clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness. — George Eliot

The whole house seemed to exhale a melancholy breath of emptiness — Michael Chabon

Me and the folks who buy my food are like the Indians
we just want to opt out. That's all the Indians ever wanted
to keep their tepees, to give their kids herbs instead of patent medicines and leeches. They didn't care if there was a Washington, D.C., or a Custer or a USDA; just leave us alone. But the Western mind can't bear an opt-out option. We're going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Big Horn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate. — Michael Pollan

I have been very lucky to have final cut in all my films; everything that is wrong in them is my fault. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Chivalry: It's the little boy that kisses my hand, the young man who holds the door open for me, and the old man who tips his hat to me. None of it is a reflection of me, but a reflection of them. — Donna Lynn Hope

Adventure is the point where you toss your life on the scales of chance and wait for the pointer to stop. — Murray Leinster

In the system of chivalry, men protect women against men. This is not unlike the protection relationship which [organized crime] established with small businesses in the early part of this century. Indeed, chivalry is an age-old protection racket which depends for its existence on rape. — Susan Griffin

She remembered reading how the American South had often compared itself to Rome back before the Civil War. In the old days their society had been all about impressive architecture, honor, and codes of chivalry. And on the evil side, it had also been about slavery. Rome had slaves, some Southerners had argued, so why shouldn't we?
Annabeth shivered. She loved the architecture here. The houses and the gardens were very beautiful, very Roman. But she wondered why beautiful things had to be wrapped up with evil history. Or was it the other way around? Maybe the evil history made it necessary to build beautiful things, to mask the darker aspects. — Rick Riordan

Sadly as some old mediaeval knight
Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
The sword two-handed and the shining shield
Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
Of tourney or adventure in the field
Came over him, and tears but half concealed
Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
My ornaments and arms of other days;
Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
In which I walked, now clouded and confused. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You know, sex at seventy-six is getting very dangerous for my health ... since I live at seventy-nine! — Kensington Gore

My theme is chivalry. I have tried to show that this old tradition is practical and vital. The ideal embodied in Launcelot is 'escapism' in a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable. — C.S. Lewis

When you're 20 years old and you're making points with volume and dynamism, it's a fantastic thing to do. — Robert Plant