Lord Chesterfield

Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it; it will counsel you best.

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.

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.

Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained.

Firmness of purpose is one of the best instruments of success.

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.

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

Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way through the world.

Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.

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.

Words are the dress of thoughts; which should no more be presented in rags, tatters, and dirt than your person should.

Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but let them feel at the same time the steadiness of your just resentment for there is a great difference between bearing malice, which is always ungenerous, and a resolute self-defense which is ever prudent and justifiable.

Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool.

Honest error is to be pitied not ridiculed.

It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therefore one seldom does it at all.

A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.

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.