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Smooth your way to the head through the heart. The way of reason is a good one: but it is commonly something longer, and perhapsnot so sure.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Longer
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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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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In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.
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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.
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Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.
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The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.
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A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
Lord Chesterfield
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If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.
Lord Chesterfield
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Almost all men are born with every passion to some extent, but there is hardly a man who has not a dominant passion to which the others are subordinate. Discover this governing passion in every individual and when you have found the master passion of a man, remember never to trust to him where that passion is concerned.
Lord Chesterfield
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We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen.
Lord Chesterfield
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Ridicule is the best test of truth.
Lord Chesterfield
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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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If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
Lord Chesterfield
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Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.
Lord Chesterfield
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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...
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
Lord Chesterfield