Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it; it will counsel you best.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of learning social customs, like dancing, with care to avoid embarrassment.
Lord Chesterfield emphasizes that social skills, such as dancing, are integral to a young man's life. He advises taking the time to learn these customs properly to avoid being perceived as foolish, suggesting that while some social expectations may seem absurd, mastering them is essential for social acceptance and success.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of social graces at a wedding.
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.
Woe be to him that reads but one book.
We need to align the incentives so that colleges have an incentive to keep down their costs... to graduate students on time with degrees in areas where they're going to be able to get jobs and going to be able to pay back those loans.
If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget. Children are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological condition, they're suffering from childhood.
You don't need to have kids to write a good book for kids. I don't want my kids to see themselves in my books. Their lives should be their lives.
Times have changed, and science has made great progress, and so has our work; but our principles have only been confirmed, and along with them our conviction that mankind can hope for a solution to its problems, among which the most urgent are those of peace and unity, only by turning its attention and energies to the discovery of the child and to the development of the great potentialities of the human personality in the course of its formation.
The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It’s influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.
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