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Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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Pass
Gold
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People
Brass
Polished
Rough

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Many people come into company full of what they intend to say in it themselves, without the least regard to others and thus charged up to the muzzle are resolved to let it off at any rate.
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It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.
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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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Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.
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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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At any age we must cherish illusions, consolatory or merely pleasant in youth, they are omnipresent in old age we must search for them, or even invent them. But with all that, boredom is their natural and inevitable accompaniment.
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Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
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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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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.
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Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.
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Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.
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I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments.
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Never write down your speeches beforehand if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater.
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Human nature is the same everywhere the modes only are different.
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The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.
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A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.
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There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.
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The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.
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Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.
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There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.
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