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Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way in the world, without them it is like a great rough diamond, very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value but most prized when polished.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.
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Lady ---- is safely delivered of a son, to the great joy of that noble family. The expression, of a woman's having brought her husband a son, seems to be a proper and cautious one for it is never said, from whence.
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Men have various subjects in which they may excel, or at least would be thought to excel, and though they love to hear justice done to them where they know they excel, yet they are most and best flattered upon those points where they wish to excel and yet are doubtful whether they do or not.
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How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?
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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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There will never be a better time to start quitting smoking than today
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Nothing sharpens the arrow of sarcasm so keenly as the courtesy that polishes it no reproach is like that we clothe with a smile and present with a bow.
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Remember that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be master of while you breathe.
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Be wiser than other people if you can but do not tell them so.
Lord Chesterfield
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I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
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Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
Lord Chesterfield
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Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
Lord Chesterfield
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Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.
Lord Chesterfield
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Ridicule is the best test of truth.
Lord Chesterfield
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Sincerity w the most compendious wisdom, an excellent instrument for the speedy despatch of business. It creates confidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labor of many inquiries, and brings things to an issue in few words.
Lord Chesterfield
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If you love music hear it go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light brings him into a great deal of bad company and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.
Lord Chesterfield
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Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you.... Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth that is the least consideration but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.
Lord Chesterfield
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Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.
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The permanency of most friendships depends upon the continuity of good fortune.
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Sexual intercourse is a grossly overrated pastime the position is undignified, the pleasure momentary and the consequences damnable.
Lord Chesterfield