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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
Manners
Expected
Specie
Return
Settled
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Returns
Good
Commercial
Life
Medium
Mediums
Equally

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
Lord Chesterfield
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In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.
Lord Chesterfield
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I would have all intoleration intolerated in its turn.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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There is a sort of veteran women of condition, who, having lived always in the grand mode, and having possibly had some gallantries, together with the experience of five and twenty or thirty years, form a young fellow better than all the rules that can be given him.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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People hate who makes you feel one's inferiority.
Lord Chesterfield
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Keep your own secret, and get out other people's. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other people's. Counterwork your rivalswith diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.
Lord Chesterfield
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Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.
Lord Chesterfield
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A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.
Lord Chesterfield
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Dispatch is the soul of business.
Lord Chesterfield
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Dancing is, in itself, a very trifling and silly thing: but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform and then they should be able to do it well. And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.
Lord Chesterfield
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Smooth your way to the head through the heart. The way of reason is a good one: but it is commonly something longer, and perhapsnot so sure.
Lord Chesterfield
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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
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An honest man may really love a pretty girl, but only an idiot marries her merely because she is pretty.
Lord Chesterfield