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The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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You must be respectable, if you will be respected.
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Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.
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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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A certain degree of ceremony is a necessary outwork of manners, as well as of religion it keeps the forward and petulant at a proper distance, and is a very small restraint to the sensible and to the well-bred part of the world.
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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 you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away?
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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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We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.
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Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.
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People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.
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It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.
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Choose the company of your superiors whenever you can have it.
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Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained.
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Instead of giving in to the greatest misfortune that can happen at my age, deafness, I busy myself in searching out all possible compensations, and I apply myself much more to all the amusements that are here within my grasp.
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A man's fortune is frequently decided by his first address. If pleasing, others at once conclude he has merit but if ungraceful, they decide against him.
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Give Dayrolles a chair.
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.
Lord Chesterfield
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When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield