Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 200

Mr. Hume hit the mark when he once stated in the House of Commons—though his words were followed by “laughter”—that the tone of living in England is altogether too high. Middle-class people are too apt to live up to their incomes, if not beyond them: affecting a degree of “style” which is most unhealthy in its effects upon society at large. There is an ambition to bring up boys as gentlemen, or rather “genteel” men; though the result frequently is, only to make them gents. They acquire a taste for dress, style, luxuries, and amusements, which can never form any solid foundation for manly or gentlemanly character; and the result is, that we have a vast number of gingerbread young gentry thrown upon the world, who remind one of the abandoned hulls sometimes picked up at sea, with only a monkey on board.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 200 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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