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Not to perceive the little weaknesses and the idle but innocent affectations of the company may be allowable as a sort of polite duty. The company will be pleased with you if you do, and most probably will not be reformed by you if you do not.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Duty
Politeness
Probably
Weaknesses
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Company
Polite
Littles
Idle
May
Perceive
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Wear your knowledge like your watch - in you pocket - and don't pull it out just for show.
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I would have all intoleration intolerated in its turn.
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Human nature is the same everywhere the modes only are different.
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Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
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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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Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.
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When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.
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I heartily wish you, in the plain home-spun style, a great number of happy new years, well employed in forming both your mind andyour manners, to be useful and agreeable to yourself, your country, and your friends.
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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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Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
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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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Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way in the world, without them it is like a great rough diamond, very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value but most prized when polished.
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Dispatch is the soul of business.
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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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I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views for lies are always detected, sooner or later.
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