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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.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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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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Those whom you can make like themselves better will, I promise you, like you very well.
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Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things for true Wit or good Sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore often seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.
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Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.
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Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
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Few people do business well, who do nothing else.
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Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life returns are equally expected for both.
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To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.
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It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therefore one seldom does it at all.
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Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.
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A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
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Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
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I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers.
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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.
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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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