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Our self-love is mortified, when we think our opinions, and even our tastes, customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemnedas, on the contrary, it is tickled and flattered by approbation.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Opinion
Condemned
Self
Tastes
Even
Customs
Love
Opinions
Mortified
Think
Dresses
Tickled
Thinking
Contrary
Approbation
Taste
Flattered
Either
Egotism

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The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveler.
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Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.
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The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.
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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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I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries and by saying Well, and so?--as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.
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Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid.
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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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Ceremony is necessary in Courts, as the outwork and defense of manners.
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There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.
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In the course of the world, a man must very often put on an easy, frank countenance, upon very disagreeable occasions he must seem pleased, when he is very much otherwise he must be able to accost and receive with smiles, those whom he would much rather meet with swords.
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Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.
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One should always think of what one is about when one is learning, one should not think of play and when one is at play, one should not think of learning.
Lord Chesterfield
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Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compassto direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.
Lord Chesterfield
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Ridicule is the best test of truth.
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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.
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Health ... is the first and greatest of all blessings.
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If you love music hear it go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light brings him into a great deal of bad company and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.
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Our conjectures pass upon us for truths we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison.
Lord Chesterfield