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Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Ugly
Either
Understanding
Upon
Indisputably
Beautiful
Understandings
Women
Flattered
Best
Flattery
Score

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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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It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.
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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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Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it it will counsel you best.
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Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self the second in a compelled recollection of others.
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When a person is in fashion, all they do is right.
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If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.
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A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.
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For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.
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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.
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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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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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Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.
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The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think their notions are almost all adoptive and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.
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Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.
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Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers.
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Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
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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?
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We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.
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There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.
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