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Nothing sharpens the arrow of sarcasm so keenly as the courtesy that polishes it no reproach is like that we clothe with a smile and present with a bow.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Smile
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Present
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Courtesy
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The more one works, the more willing one is to work.
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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.
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You must labour to acquire that great and uncommon talent of hating with good breeding, and loving with prudence to make no quarrel irreconcilable by silly and unnecessary indications of anger and no friendship dangerous, in care it breaks, by a wanton, indiscreet, and unreserved confidence.
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In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
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To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.
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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.
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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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Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.
Lord Chesterfield
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Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.
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Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.
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How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?
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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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If a man, notoriously and designedly, insults and affronts you, knock him down but if he only injures you, your best revenge is to be extremely civil to him in your outward behaviour, though at the same time you counterwork him, and return him the compliment, perhaps with interest.
Lord Chesterfield
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Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.
Lord Chesterfield
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Sincerity w the most compendious wisdom, an excellent instrument for the speedy despatch of business. It creates confidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labor of many inquiries, and brings things to an issue in few words.
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
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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.
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Health ... is the first and greatest of all blessings.
Lord Chesterfield
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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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Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.
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