"Ou vous avez un rival ou vous n'en n'avez pas. Si vous en avez un, il faut plaire pour lui être préféré; si vous n'en n'avez pas, il faut encore plaire pour éviter d'en avoir."

"Le ridicule qu’on a augmente toujours en proportion qu’on s’en défend."

"Pour les hommes, dites-vous vous-même, l'infidélité n'est pas l'inconstance."

"L’homme jouit du bonheur qu’il ressent, et la femme de celui qu’elle procure. Cette différence, si essentielle et si peu remarquée, influe pourtant, d'une manière bien sensible, sur la totalité de leur conduite respective. Le plaisir de l’un est de satisfaire des désirs, celui de l’autre est surtout de les faire naître."

"La honte que cause l’amour est comme sa douleur: on ne l’éprouve qu’une fois. On peut encore la feindre après; mais on ne la sent plus. Cependant le plaisir reste, et c’est bien quelque chose."

"Le luxe absorbe tout: on le blâme, mais il faut l'imiter; et le superflu finit par priver du nécessaire."

"Une main occupée pour la force, l'autre pour l'amour, quel orateur pourrait prétendre à la grâce en pareille situation?"

"L'amour est, comme la médecine, seulement l'art d'aider à la nature."

"On peut citer de mauvais vers, quand ils sont d'un grand poète."

"On a toujours assez vécu, quand on a eu le temps d’acquérir l’amour des femmes et l’estime des hommes."

"Patience, to hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications: with address enough to refuse, without offending; or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation: dexterity enough to conceal a truth, without telling a lie: sagacity enough to read other people’s countenances: and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness, with a real reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar."

"To my great surprise they seem really written from the heart, not for the honour of his head, and in truth do no great honour to the last, nor show much feeling in the first, except in wishing for his son's fine gentleman-hood."

"They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master."

"For my part, I like more straight-forward work."

"It wasn't until I grew up and read Lord Chesterfield that I began my education. He became my tutor and the public library my university."

"[On sex] The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, the expense damnable."

"You foolish man, you do not understand your own foolish business."

"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."

"In short, let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the informations of others."

"Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance."

"Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct—never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike."

"People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt."

"The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling."

"There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest; but there is seldom one in which a man should tell all. Great skill is necessary to know how far to go, and where to stop."

"A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones."

"It is a great advantage for any man to be able to talk or hear, neither ignorantly nor absurdly, upon any subject; for I have known people, who have not said one word, hear ignorantly and absurdly; it has appeared by their inattentive and unmeaning faces."

"Every woman is infallibly to be gained by every sort of flattery, and every man by one sort or other."

"Let dull critics feed upon the carcasses of plays; give me the taste and the dressing."

"It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth."

"You had better refuse a favor gracefully, than to grant it clumsily. Manner is all, in everything: it is by manner only that you can please, and consequently rise. All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your manner, your air, if good, very probably may."

"The manner is often as important as the matter, sometimes more so."

"Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote."

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

"I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it to you."

"Dispatch is the soul of business."

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

"We must not draw general conclusions from certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No. We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion."

"Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics."

"Style is the dress of thoughts."

"Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one’s own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people’s, preserve dignity."

"Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds."

"I recommend to you, in my last, an innocent piece of art: that of flattering people behind their backs, in presence of those who, to make their own court, much more than for your sake, will not fail to repeat, and even amplify, the praise to the party concerned. This is of all flattery the most pleasing, and consequently the most effectual."

"Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all."

"The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are."

"A strong mind sees things in their true proportions; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium, which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea: magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones."

"Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latter deserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious."