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Ceremony is necessary in Courts, as the outwork and defense of manners.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Courts
Courtesy
Ceremony
Manners
Defense
Necessary
Outwork

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The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.
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It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you I both own and justify it. It has been long said: Qui nescitdissimular nescit regnare: I go still farther, and say, that without some dissimulation, no business can be carried on at all.
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Deserve a great deal, and you shall have a great deal deserve little, and you shall have but a little and be good for nothing atall, and I assure you, you shall have nothing at all.
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Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.
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Be wiser than other people if you can but do not tell them so.
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In the course of the world, a man must very often put on an easy, frank countenance, upon very disagreeable occasions he must seem pleased, when he is very much otherwise he must be able to accost and receive with smiles, those whom he would much rather meet with swords.
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Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
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I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.
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Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.
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Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry judge them all by their merits, but not by their age
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Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than your humble servant, at the bottom of a challengeis they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.
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Talk often, but never long in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers. Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company this being one of the few cases in which people do not care to be treated, every one being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.
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Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.
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It is to be presumed, that a man of common sense, who does not desire to please, desires nothing at all since he must know that he cannot obtain anything without it.
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Real friendship is a slow grower.
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Remember that the wit, humour, and jokes of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear transplanting.
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Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.
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Dispatch is the soul of business.
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Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it it will counsel you best.
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If you will please people, you must please them in their own way and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.
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