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Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Absolutes
Absolute
Errors
Ignorance
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Supported
Error
Prejudice

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Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.
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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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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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Next to clothes being fine, they should be well made, and worn easily for a man is only the less genteel for a fine coat, if, in wearing it, he shows a regard for it, and is not as easy in it as if it was a plain one.
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I am convinced that a light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man, who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and rainy morning, would have proved a coward.
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The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.
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Violent measures are always dangerous, but, when necessary, may then be looked on as wise. They have, however, the advantage of never being matter of indifference and, when well concerted, must be decisive.
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Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.
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In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.
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I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
Lord Chesterfield
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Most arts require long study and application, but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.
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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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Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
Lord Chesterfield
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Real friendship is a slow grower.
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In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
Lord Chesterfield
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Learning is acquired by reading books much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.
Lord Chesterfield
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The possibility of remedying imprudent actions is commonly an inducement to commit them.
Lord Chesterfield
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Our self-love is mortified, when we think our opinions, and even our tastes, customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemnedas, on the contrary, it is tickled and flattered by approbation.
Lord Chesterfield
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Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.
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Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something.
Lord Chesterfield