I take it that 'gentleman' is a term that only describes a person in his relation to others; but when we speak of him as 'a man,' we consider him not merely with regard to his fellow-men, but in relation to himself,--to life--to time--to eternity.
Interpretation
A 'gentleman' is defined by how he interacts with others, but a 'man' encompasses a broader understanding of his existence.
In this quote, Elizabeth Gaskell distinguishes between the terms 'gentleman' and 'man'. While a 'gentleman' refers specifically to the way one interacts and behaves towards others, the term 'man' reflects a deeper and more holistic consideration of an individual's relationship to himself and the larger concepts of life, time, and eternity. This suggests that true understanding of a person goes beyond social constructs to include their internal and existential dimensions.
In practice
In a discussion about personal values in a leadership seminar.
Neither loss of father, nor loss of mother, dear as she was to Mr Thornton, could have poisoned the remembrance of the weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of two miles, every step of which was pleasant, as it brought him nearer and nearer to her, took him to her sweet presence - every step of which was rich, as each recurring moment that bore him away from her made him recal some fresh grace in her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her character.
It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young; afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive." (Mr. Bell)
Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used--not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.
Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life....My precept is, do something, my sister, do good if you can; but at any rate, do something.
Mr. Thornton felt that in this influx no one was speaking to Margaret, and was restless under this apparent neglect. But he never went near her himself; he did not look at her. Only, he knew what she was doing β or not doing β better than anyone else in the room. Margaret was so unconscious of herself, and so much amused by watching other people, that she never thought whether she was left unnoticed or not.
Well, He had known what love was-a sharp pang, a fierce experience, in the midst of whose flames he was struggling! but, through that furnace he would fight his way out into the serenity of middle age,-all the richer and more human for having known this great passion.
In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.
If the universe is everything, and scientists say that the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?
When you become a sannyasin, I initiate you into freedom, and into nothing else... I am destroying your ideologies, creeds, cults, dogmas, and I am not replacing them with anything else.
I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.
Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
People do not give from the top of their purses but from the bottom of their hearts. If you desire to become a more generous person do not change your income. Change your heart.
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