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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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Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires.
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I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
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There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest: but there is seldom one in which a man should tell it all.
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Compliments of congratulation are always kindly taken, and cost nothing but pen, ink and paper. I consider them as draughts upon good breeding, where the exchange is always greatly in favor of the drawer.
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Ceremony is necessary in Courts, as the outwork and defense of manners.
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Few people do business well, who do nothing else.
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If originally it was not good for a man to be alone, it is much worse for a sick man to be so he thinks too much of his distemper, and magnifies it.
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You must be respectable, if you will be respected.
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I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide.
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Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.
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Not to perceive the little weaknesses and the idle but innocent affectations of the company may be allowable as a sort of polite duty. The company will be pleased with you if you do, and most probably will not be reformed by you if you do not.
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Human nature is the same everywhere the modes only are different.
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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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Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.
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