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Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way for merit, that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties...

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching.
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Few people do business well, who do nothing else.
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Dispatch is the soul of business.
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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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Many people come into company full of what they intend to say in it themselves, without the least regard to others and thus charged up to the muzzle are resolved to let it off at any rate.
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A man who cannot command his temper, his attention, and his countenance should not think of being a man of business.
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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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So much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day than a regular and consequential character.
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Ridicule is the best test of truth.
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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.
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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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A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
Lord Chesterfield
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I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries and by saying Well, and so?--as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.
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Little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge and are incapable of feeling te pleasure of forgiving their enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
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Wear your knowledge like your watch - in you pocket - and don't pull it out just for show.
Lord Chesterfield
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There will never be a better time to start quitting smoking than today
Lord Chesterfield
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I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
Lord Chesterfield
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It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.
Lord Chesterfield