Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.

A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.

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.

Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one.

The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.

Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason.

Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but at the same time let them feel, the steadiness of your resentment.

Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.

Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.

Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me.

Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.

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.

Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.

Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.

Take the tone of the company you are in.

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.

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.