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Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self the second in a compelled recollection of others.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Willing
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A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.
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Silence and reserve suggest latent power. What some men think has more effect than what others say.
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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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The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.
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A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
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Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not.
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People hate who makes you feel one's inferiority.
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Dispatch is the soul of business.
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In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
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Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.
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If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.
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In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own for men in general are very much alike and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases or offends you, in others, will, mutatis mutandis, engage, disgust, please, or offend others, in you.
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Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.
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The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon his dress and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time he knows he must not neglect it.
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In your friendships and in your enmities let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business.
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The more one works, the more willing one is to work.
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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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I can hardly bring myself to caution you against drinking, because I am persuaded that I am writing to a rational creature, a gentleman, and not to a swine. However, that you may not be insensibly drawn into that beastly custom of even sober drinking and sipping, as the sots call it, I advise you to be of no club whatsoever.
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The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.
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Talk often, but never long in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers. Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company this being one of the few cases in which people do not care to be treated, every one being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.
Lord Chesterfield