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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
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A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
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Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry judge them all by their merits, but not by their age
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Learning is acquired by reading books much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.
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Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.
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Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.
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I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide.
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Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way for merit, that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties...
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There are people who indulge themselves in a sort of lying, which they reckon innocent, and which in one sense is so for it hurtsnobody but themselves. This sort of lying is the spurious offspring of vanity, begotten upon folly.
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I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
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Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love these are their universal characteristics.
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Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.
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Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.
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It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.
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History is but a confused heap of facts.
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Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.
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I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers.
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Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you.
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If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.
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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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The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
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