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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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Lord Chesterfield
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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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If you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away?
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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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It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.
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Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorumat least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.
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Our conjectures pass upon us for truths we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.
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Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you canbut never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.
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I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments.
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Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.
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Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires.
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Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.
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A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.
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To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.
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The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.
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A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
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Talk often, but never long in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers. Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company this being one of the few cases in which people do not care to be treated, every one being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.
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The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom.
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Lady ---- is safely delivered of a son, to the great joy of that noble family. The expression, of a woman's having brought her husband a son, seems to be a proper and cautious one for it is never said, from whence.
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Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
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Human nature is the same everywhere the modes only are different.
Lord Chesterfield