Summary: <p>Listen to episode 177 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Being a Gentleman (The Art of Manhood & Manliness). Edited and adapted from “On the Threshold” by Theodore Thornton Munger.</p><br> <p><strong>Motivational Podcast Excerpt</strong>: <em>Every man should desire above all else to be regarded as a gentleman. There once was a time when the greatest offense you could levy on man was to call him not a gentleman. But today we struggle to even understand what the term gentleman means. So today we will search it with definitions. </em></p><br> <p><em>The word gentleman undoubtedly comes from the Latin gens, meaning tribe or family — hence all the one-sided and incomplete notions that a gentleman is a man of family. It is a good thing to born into a loving family, with inherited tastes and traditions; but birth does not make the gentleman. </em></p><br> <p><em>The writer Julius Hare famously said that a gentleman should be gentle in everything; at least in everything that depends upon himself — in carriage, temper, construction, aims, desires. He ought, there- fore, to be mild, calm, quiet, temperate; not hasty in judgment, not exorbitant in ambition, not overbearing, not proud, not rapacious, not oppressive. </em></p><br> <p><em>Other classic writers describe the gentleman as possessing a character that is distinguished by strict honor, self-possession, forbearance, generous as well as refined feelings, and polished deportment — a character to which all meanness, explosive irritability, and peevish fretfulness are alien; to which, consequently, a generous candor, truthfulness, dignity, and self-respect have become natural. </em></p><br> <p><em>The gentleman is never unduly familiar; takes no liberties; is cautious of questions; is neither artificial nor affected; bears himself tenderly towards the weak and unprotected; is not arrogant; cannot be supercilious; can be self-denying without struggle; is not vain of his advantages; habitually subordinates his lower to his higher self; is (in his best condition) electric with truth, buoyant with veracity.</em></p><br> <p><strong>Related Motivational Podcasts:</strong></p><br> <p><a title="Rules for Gentlemen" href="http://podcast.livinghour.org/e/how-to-be-a-gentleman-and-lady-style-grace/">How to Be a Gentleman & Lady</a></p><br> <p><a title="Good Manners" href="http://podcast.livinghour.org/e/good-manners-the-power-of-courtesy/">The Power of Courtesy</a></p>
