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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

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Lord Chesterfield
Country
Arbitrary
Must
Seldom
Slow
Terrorism
Degrees
Step
Steps
Power
Introduced

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A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.
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Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.
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Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison.
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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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Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.
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We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen.
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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.
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The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom.
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I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
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It is hard to say which is the greatest fool: he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.
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When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.
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You must be respectable, if you will be respected.
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I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide.
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A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.
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In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own for men in general are very much alike and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases or offends you, in others, will, mutatis mutandis, engage, disgust, please, or offend others, in you.
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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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We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.
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Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.
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If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
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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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