Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked.
— Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Politeness is as much concerned in answering letters within a reasonable time, as it is in returning a bow, immediately.
Women are only children of a larger growth. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.
It is always right to detect a fraud, and to perceive a folly; but it is very often wrong to expose either. A man of business should always have his eyes open, but must often seem to have them shut.
Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always want it the least.
Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
The more one works, the more willing one is to work.
Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.
If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.
Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.
In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
When a person is in fashion, all they do is right.
Words, which are the dress of thoughts, deserve surely more care than clothes, which are only the dress of the person.
Whoever incites anger has a strong insurance against indifference.
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.
Gratitude is a burden upon our imperfect nature, and we are but too willing to ease ourselves of it, or at least to lighten it as much as we can.
Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.
To govern mankind, one must not overrate them.
I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.
Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.
The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.
He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves.
I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.
Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.
Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed.
Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is.
There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.
A young man, be his merit what it will, can never raise himself; but must, like the ivy round the oak, twine himself round some man of great power and interest.
Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.
Character must be kept bright as well as clean.
A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
Take the tone of the company you are in.
The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.
The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.
Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.
Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you.
Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.
A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.
Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them.
If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
