Gentleness

Gentleness is the value and quality of one's character. Being gentle has a long history in many, but not all cultures. Gentleness is considered to play a very important role in life.

The quality of gentleness is colloquially understood to be that of kindness, consideration and amiability. [1] Aristotle used it in a technical sense as the virtue that strikes the mean with regard to anger: being too quick to anger is a vice, but so is being detached in a situation where anger is appropriate; justified and properly focused anger is named mildness or gentleness.[2]

A second important usage was common in medieval times, associated with higher social classes: hence the derivation of the terms gentleman, gentlewoman and gentry. The broadening of gentle behavior from a literal sense of the gentry to the metaphorical "like a gentleman" applicable to any person was a later development.[3]

External links

  1. ↑ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gentleness
  2. ↑ Garrett, Jan. "Virtue Ethics: A Basic Introductory Essay".
  3. ↑ Lewis, C.S. (2001). Mere Christianity. San Francisco: Harper. pp. xiii. ISBN 978-0060652920.
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