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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
Social
Returns
Good
Commercial
Life
Medium
Mediums
Equally

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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If you will please people, you must please them in their own way and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.
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Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not.
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Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.
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I really think next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing and the epithet which I should covet the most next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.
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Men have various subjects in which they may excel, or at least would be thought to excel, and though they love to hear justice done to them where they know they excel, yet they are most and best flattered upon those points where they wish to excel and yet are doubtful whether they do or not.
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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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Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
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Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
Lord Chesterfield
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The permanency of most friendships depends upon the continuity of good fortune.
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.
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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
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A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
Lord Chesterfield
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I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.
Lord Chesterfield
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Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.
Lord Chesterfield
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How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?
Lord Chesterfield
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Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way in the world, without them it is like a great rough diamond, very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value but most prized when polished.
Lord Chesterfield
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Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
Lord Chesterfield
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Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.
Lord Chesterfield
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If you love music hear it go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light brings him into a great deal of bad company and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.
Lord Chesterfield
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Ceremony is necessary in Courts, as the outwork and defense of manners.
Lord Chesterfield