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To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Littles
Ridicule
Anything
Satisfaction
Little
Brings
Giving
Credit
Neither
Gives
Knowledge
Often
Disgrace

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Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.
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The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim.
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The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.
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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.
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Pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and never pull it out in company unless desired.
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If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
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Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.
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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.
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This is the day when people reciprocally offer, and receive, the kindest and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meaning them on one side, or believing them on the other. They are formed by the head, in compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of nature.
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You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe at once all the people in the room--their motions, their looks and their words--and yet without staring at them and seeming to be an observer.
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Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.
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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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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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The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.
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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.
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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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Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry judge them all by their merits, but not by their age
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Health ... is the first and greatest of all blessings.
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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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Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it merely to show that you have one.
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