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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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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield
Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.
Lord Chesterfield
Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
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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.
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There are people who indulge themselves in a sort of lying, which they reckon innocent, and which in one sense is so for it hurtsnobody but themselves. This sort of lying is the spurious offspring of vanity, begotten upon folly.
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The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.
Lord Chesterfield
The greatest dangers have their allurements, if the want of success is likely to be attended with a degree of glory. Middling dangers are horrid, when the loss of reputation is the inevitable consequence of ill success.
Lord Chesterfield
The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
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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Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.
Lord Chesterfield
Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.
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Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
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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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In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.
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Mind not only what people say, but how they say it and if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will and their looks frequently (reveal) what their words are calculated to conceal.
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There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest: but there is seldom one in which a man should tell it all.
Lord Chesterfield
A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.
Lord Chesterfield
Wear your knowledge like your watch - in you pocket - and don't pull it out just for show.
Lord Chesterfield
Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid.
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Nothing sharpens the arrow of sarcasm so keenly as the courtesy that polishes it no reproach is like that we clothe with a smile and present with a bow.
Lord Chesterfield
Dispatch is the soul of business.
Lord Chesterfield