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To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.

Lord Chesterfield

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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 you love music hear it go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light brings him into a great deal of bad company and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.
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When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.
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Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self the second in a compelled recollection of others.
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Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than your humble servant, at the bottom of a challengeis they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.
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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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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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Give Dayrolles a chair.
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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.
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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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Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. 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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I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
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The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.
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Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.
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A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
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The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse always harder.
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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.
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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.
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