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A certain degree of ceremony is a necessary outwork of manners, as well as of religion it keeps the forward and petulant at a proper distance, and is a very small restraint to the sensible and to the well-bred part of the world.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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Remember that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be master of while you breathe.
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A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
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Little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge and are incapable of feeling te pleasure of forgiving their enemies.
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You must be respectable, if you will be respected.
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Most arts require long study and application, but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.
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In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.
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The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim.
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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.
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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.
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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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History is but a confused heap of facts.
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Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.
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Sincerity is the most compendious wisdom.
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A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.
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The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think their notions are almost all adoptive and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.
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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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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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Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.
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We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen.
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Men have various subjects in which they may excel, or at least would be thought to excel, and though they love to hear justice done to them where they know they excel, yet they are most and best flattered upon those points where they wish to excel and yet are doubtful whether they do or not.
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