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

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This is the day when people reciprocally offer, and receive, the kindest and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meaning them on one side, or believing them on the other. They are formed by the head, in compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of nature.
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Those whom you can make like themselves better will, I promise you, like you very well.
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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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Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.
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Remember that the wit, humour, and jokes of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear transplanting.
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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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Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices thatmay accompany it. Accept no present whatever let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.
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A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.
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Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.
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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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Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.
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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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Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it it will counsel you best.
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Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.
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No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business and few people do business well, who do nothing else.
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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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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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The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
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If you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away?
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There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest: but there is seldom one in which a man should tell it all.
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