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Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life returns are equally expected for both.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Return
Settled
Social
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Good
Commercial
Life
Medium
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Equally
Manners
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Specie

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
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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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Deserve a great deal, and you shall have a great deal deserve little, and you shall have but a little and be good for nothing atall, and I assure you, you shall have nothing at all.
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A man who owes a little can clear it off in a very little time, and, if he is a prudent man, will whereas a man, who by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.
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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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Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison.
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In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
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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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To me it appears strange that the men against whom I should be enabled to bring an action for laying a little dirt at my door, may with impunity drive by it half-a-dozen calves, with their tails lopped close to their bodies and their hinder parts covered with blood.
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When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.
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Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
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History is but a confused heap of facts.
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In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.
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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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Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
Lord Chesterfield
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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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If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.
Lord Chesterfield
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In the course of the world, a man must very often put on an easy, frank countenance, upon very disagreeable occasions he must seem pleased, when he is very much otherwise he must be able to accost and receive with smiles, those whom he would much rather meet with swords.
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Most arts require long study and application, but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.
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Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.
Lord Chesterfield