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Silence and reserve suggest latent power. What some men think has more effect than what others say.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Power
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Silence
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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I can hardly bring myself to caution you against drinking, because I am persuaded that I am writing to a rational creature, a gentleman, and not to a swine. However, that you may not be insensibly drawn into that beastly custom of even sober drinking and sipping, as the sots call it, I advise you to be of no club whatsoever.
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I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views for lies are always detected, sooner or later.
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I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
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Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.
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Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love these are their universal characteristics.
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The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think their notions are almost all adoptive and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.
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Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.
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A man who cannot command his temper, his attention, and his countenance should not think of being a man of business.
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A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
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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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The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom.
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To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.
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For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.
Lord Chesterfield
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If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
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Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way for merit, that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties...
Lord Chesterfield
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Remember, as long as you live, that nothing but strict truth can carry you through the world, with either your conscience or your honor unwounded.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compassto direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.
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Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.
Lord Chesterfield
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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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