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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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In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.
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Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.
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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.
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Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.
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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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A man who owes a little can clear it off in a very little time, and, if he is a prudent man, will whereas a man, who by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.
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In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own for men in general are very much alike and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases or offends you, in others, will, mutatis mutandis, engage, disgust, please, or offend others, in you.
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Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.
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If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
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Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.
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In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
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The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments. People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel.
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