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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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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not.
Lord Chesterfield
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It is to be presumed, that a man of common sense, who does not desire to please, desires nothing at all since he must know that he cannot obtain anything without it.
Lord Chesterfield
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Sincerity is the most compendious wisdom.
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Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self the second in a compelled recollection of others.
Lord Chesterfield
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A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
Lord Chesterfield
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No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business and few people do business well, who do nothing else.
Lord Chesterfield
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I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries and by saying Well, and so?--as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.
Lord Chesterfield
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When one is at play, one should not think of one's learning.
Lord Chesterfield
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No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.
Lord Chesterfield
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Not to care for philosophy is to be a true philospher.
Lord Chesterfield
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If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
Lord Chesterfield
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Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.
Lord Chesterfield
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The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom.
Lord Chesterfield
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Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.
Lord Chesterfield
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Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you.
Lord Chesterfield
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An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
Lord Chesterfield
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Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.
Lord Chesterfield
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Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield