"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"The idle story of the Pretender's having been introduced in a warming-pan, into the Queen's bed, though as destitute of all probability as of all foundation, has been much more prejudicial to the cause of Jacobitism, than all that Mr. Locke and others have written, to show the unreasonableness and absurdity of the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right, and unlimited passive obedience."

"I foresee, that before the end of this century, the trade of both King and Priest will not be half so good a one as it has been."

"The chapter of knowledge is a very short, but the chapter of accidents is a very long one."

"I assisted at the birth of that most significant word "flirtation," which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world."

"Unlike my subject will I frame my song, It shall be witty, and it shan't be long."

"At twelve you may walk, for at this time o' the year, The sun like your wit, is as mild, as 'tis clear: But mark in the meadows the ruin of Time; Take the hint, and let life be improv'd in its prime."

"Cheerful with wisdom, with innocence gay, And calm with your joys gently glide thro' the day. The dews of the evening most carefully shun — Those tears of the sky for the loss of the sun."

"Then in chat, or at play, with a dance, or a song, Let the night, like the day, pass with pleasure along. All cares, but of love, banish far from your mind; And those you may end, when you please to be kind."

"All the precepts of Christianity agree to teach and command us to moderate our passions, to temper our affections towards all things below; to be thankful for the possession, and patient under the loss whenever he that gave it shall see fit to take away."

"From these famous Indians, it seems most probable that Pythagoras learned, and transported into Greece and Italy, the greatest part of his natural and moral philosophy, rather than from the Aegyptians ... Nor does it seem unlikely that the Aegyptians themselves might have drawn much of their learning from the Indians ..long before .. Lycurgus, who likewise traveled to India, brought from thence also the chief principles of his laws."

"When these children are four years old, they shall be sent to the country workhouse and there taught to read two hours a day and kept fully employed the rest of their time in any of the manufactures of the house which best suits their age, strength and capacity. If it be objected that at these early years, they cannot be made useful, I reply that at four years of age there are sturdy employments in which children can earn their living; but besides, there is considerable use in their being, somehow or other, constantly employed at least twelve hours in a day, whether they earn a living or not; for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them..."

"No clap of thunder in a fair frosty day could astonish the world more than [England's] declaration of war against Holland in 1672."

"When all is done, human life is, at the greatest, and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."

"Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed."

"Whoever converses much among the old books, will be something hard to please among the new."