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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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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield
The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.
Lord Chesterfield
Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than your humble servant, at the bottom of a challengeis they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.
Lord Chesterfield
Pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and never pull it out in company unless desired.
Lord Chesterfield
Many new years you may see, but happy ones you cannot see without deserving them. These virtue, honor, and knowledge alone can merit, alone can produce.
Lord Chesterfield
A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
Lord Chesterfield
Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
Lord Chesterfield
I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.
Lord Chesterfield
If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching.
Lord Chesterfield
Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.
Lord Chesterfield
Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
Lord Chesterfield
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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Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.
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Almost all men are born with every passion to some extent, but there is hardly a man who has not a dominant passion to which the others are subordinate. Discover this governing passion in every individual and when you have found the master passion of a man, remember never to trust to him where that passion is concerned.
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Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.
Lord Chesterfield
Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.
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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
The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveler.
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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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Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something.
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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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