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We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Diffidence
Confidence
Often
Duped

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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.
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Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.
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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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In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.
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Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.
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Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.
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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.
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Ridicule is the best test of truth.
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Deserve a great deal, and you shall have a great deal deserve little, and you shall have but a little and be good for nothing atall, and I assure you, you shall have nothing at all.
Lord Chesterfield
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Next to clothes being fine, they should be well made, and worn easily for a man is only the less genteel for a fine coat, if, in wearing it, he shows a regard for it, and is not as easy in it as if it was a plain one.
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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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If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
Lord Chesterfield
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The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.
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Though we cannot totally change our nature, we may in great measure correct it by reflection and philosophy and some philosophy is a very necessary companion in this world, where, even to the most fortunate, the chances are greatly against happiness.
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Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.
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A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.
Lord Chesterfield
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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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Most arts require long study and application, but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.
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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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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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