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We are hardly ever grateful for a fine clock or watch when it goes right, and we pay attention to it only when it falters, for then we are caught by surprise. It ought to be the other way about.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.
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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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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 wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
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Wear your knowledge like your watch - in you pocket - and don't pull it out just for show.
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Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.
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Dancing is, in itself, a very trifling and silly thing: but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform and then they should be able to do it well. And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well.
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Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
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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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Ridicule is the best test of truth.
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Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.
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So much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day than a regular and consequential character.
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Compliments of congratulation are always kindly taken, and cost nothing but pen, ink and paper. I consider them as draughts upon good breeding, where the exchange is always greatly in favor of the drawer.
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One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.
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Silence and reserve suggest latent power. What some men think has more effect than what others say.
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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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Sincerity is the most compendious wisdom.
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I am convinced that a light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man, who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and rainy morning, would have proved a coward.
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Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.
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The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse always harder.
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