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I really think next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing and the epithet which I should covet the most next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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Prepare yourself for the world, as athletes used to do for their exercises oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility strength alone will not do.
Lord Chesterfield
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One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
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Almost all men are born with every passion to some extent, but there is hardly a man who has not a dominant passion to which the others are subordinate. Discover this governing passion in every individual and when you have found the master passion of a man, remember never to trust to him where that passion is concerned.
Lord Chesterfield
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Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.
Lord Chesterfield
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If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.
Lord Chesterfield
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Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.
Lord Chesterfield
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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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I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
Lord Chesterfield
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Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.
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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than your humble servant, at the bottom of a challengeis they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.
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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To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.
Lord Chesterfield
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No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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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
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Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.
Lord Chesterfield
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The more one works, the more willing one is to work.
Lord Chesterfield
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It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you I both own and justify it. It has been long said: Qui nescitdissimular nescit regnare: I go still farther, and say, that without some dissimulation, no business can be carried on at all.
Lord Chesterfield
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To me it appears strange that the men against whom I should be enabled to bring an action for laying a little dirt at my door, may with impunity drive by it half-a-dozen calves, with their tails lopped close to their bodies and their hinder parts covered with blood.
Lord Chesterfield