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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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Lord Chesterfield
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To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.
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Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self the second in a compelled recollection of others.
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Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.
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We are hardly ever grateful for a fine clock or watch when it goes right, and we pay attention to it only when it falters, for then we are caught by surprise. It ought to be the other way about.
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Those whom you can make like themselves better will, I promise you, like you very well.
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A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
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