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I heartily wish you, in the plain home-spun style, a great number of happy new years, well employed in forming both your mind andyour manners, to be useful and agreeable to yourself, your country, and your friends.

Lord Chesterfield

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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers.
Lord Chesterfield
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A man who cannot command his temper, his attention, and his countenance should not think of being a man of business.
Lord Chesterfield
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Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.
Lord Chesterfield
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If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching.
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Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.
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Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it merely to show that you have one.
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Next to clothes being fine, they should be well made, and worn easily for a man is only the less genteel for a fine coat, if, in wearing it, he shows a regard for it, and is not as easy in it as if it was a plain one.
Lord Chesterfield
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Wear your knowledge like your watch - in you pocket - and don't pull it out just for show.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Never write down your speeches beforehand if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.
Lord Chesterfield
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People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.
Lord Chesterfield
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A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
Lord Chesterfield
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Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you.... Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth that is the least consideration but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.
Lord Chesterfield
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It is to be presumed, that a man of common sense, who does not desire to please, desires nothing at all since he must know that he cannot obtain anything without it.
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Instead of giving in to the greatest misfortune that can happen at my age, deafness, I busy myself in searching out all possible compensations, and I apply myself much more to all the amusements that are here within my grasp.
Lord Chesterfield
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Style is the dress of thoughts, and let them be ever so just.
Lord Chesterfield