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Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
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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 wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
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Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things for true Wit or good Sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore often seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.
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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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Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
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No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business and few people do business well, who do nothing else.
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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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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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Keep your own secret, and get out other people's. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other people's. Counterwork your rivalswith diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.
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A man who owes a little can clear it off in a very little time, and, if he is a prudent man, will whereas a man, who by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.
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Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.
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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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History is but a confused heap of facts.
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Style is the dress of thoughts and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.
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Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.
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Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.
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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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Be wiser than other people if you can but do not tell them so.
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The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.
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