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Take rather than give the tone to the company you are in. If you have parts you will show them more or less upon every subject and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people's than of your own choosing.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Giving
Rather
Every
Upon
Choosing
People
Less
Tone
Show
Parts
Shows
Subject
Give
Subjects
Better
Company
Take
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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Many new years you may see, but happy ones you cannot see without deserving them. These virtue, honor, and knowledge alone can merit, alone can produce.
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Ridicule is the best test of truth.
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Sincerity is the most compendious wisdom.
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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.
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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.
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Not to care for philosophy is to be a true philospher.
Lord Chesterfield
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Remember that the wit, humour, and jokes of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear transplanting.
Lord Chesterfield
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Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compassto direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.
Lord Chesterfield
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Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.
Lord Chesterfield
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Mind not only what people say, but how they say it and if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will and their looks frequently (reveal) what their words are calculated to conceal.
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Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.
Lord Chesterfield
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Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.
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Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love these are their universal characteristics.
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If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
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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If you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away?
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.
Lord Chesterfield