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Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (Письма к сыну – полный вариант)

Page 84

by Филип Дормер Стенхоп Честерфилд


  Fullbottomed wigs were contrived for his humpback

  Gain the heart, or you gain nothing

  Gain the affections as well as the esteem

  Gainer by your misfortune

  General conclusions from certain particular principles

  Generosity often runs into profusion

  Genteel without affectation

  Gentlemen, who take such a fancy to you at first sight

  Gentleness of manners, with firmness of mind

  Geography and history are very imperfect separately

  German, who has taken into his head that he understands French

  Go to the bottom of things

  Good manners

  Good reasons alleged are seldom the true ones

  Good manners are the settled medium of social life

  Good company

  Goodbreeding

  Graces: Without us, all labor is vain

  Gratitude not being universal, nor even common

  Grave without the affectation of wisdom

  Great learning; which, if not accompanied with sound judgment

  Great numbers of people met together, animate each other

  Greatest fools are the greatest liars

  Grow wiser when it is too late

  Guard against those who make the most court to you

  Habit and prejudice

  Habitual eloquence

  Half done or half known

  Hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind

  Hardly any body good for every thing

  Haste and hurry are very different things

  Have no pleasures but your own

  Have a will and an opinion of your own, and adhere to it

  Have I employed my time, or have I squandered it?

  Have but one set of jokes to live upon

  Have you learned to carve?

  He that is gentil doeth gentil deeds

  He will find it out of himself without your endeavors

  Heart has such an influence over the understanding

  Helps only, not as guides

  Herd of mankind can hardly be said to think

  Historians

  Holiday eloquence

  Home, be it ever so homely

  Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed

  Honestest man loves himself best

  Horace

  How troublesome an old correspondent must be to a young one

  How much you have to do; and how little time to do it in

  Human nature is always the same

  Hurt those they love by a mistaken indulgence

  I hope, I wish, I doubt, and fear alternately

  I shall never know, though all the coffeehouses here do.

  I shall always love you as you shall deserve.

  I know myself (no common piece of knowledge, let me tell you)

  I CANNOT DO SUCH A THING

  I, who am not apt to know anything that I do not know

  Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds

  If free from the guilt, be free from the suspicion, too

  If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself

  If I don't mind his orders he won't mind my draughts

  If you will persuade, you must first please

  If once we quarrel, I will never forgive

  Ignorant of their natural rights, cherished their chains

  Impertinent insult upon custom and fashion

  Improve yourself with the old, divert yourself with the young

  Inaction at your age is unpardonable

  Inattention

  Inattentive, absent; and distrait

  Inclined to be fat, but I hope you will decline it

  Incontinency of friendship among young fellows

  Indiscriminate familiarity

  Indiscriminately loading their memories with every part alike

  Indolence

  Indolently say that they cannot do

  Infallibly to be gained by every sort of flattery

  Information is, in a certain degree, mortifying

  Information implies our previous ignorance; it must be sweetened

  Injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult

  Inquisition

  Insinuates himself only into the esteem of fools

  Insipid in his pleasures, as inefficient in everything else

  Insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself

  Insolent civility

  INTOLERATION in religious, and inhospitality in civil matters

  Intrinsic, and not their imaginary value

  It is a real inconvenience to anybody to be fat

  It is not sufficient to deserve well; one must please well too

  Jealous of being slighted

  Jog on like man and wife; that is, seldom agreeing

  Judge of every man's truth by his degree of understanding

  Judge them all by their merits, but not by their ages

  Judges from the appearances of things, and not from the reality

  Keep your own temper and artfully warm other people's

  Keep good company, and company above yourself

  Kick him upstairs

  King's popularity is a better guard than their army

  Know their real value, and how much they are generally overrated

  Know the true value of time

  Know, yourself and others

  Knowing how much you have, and how little you want

  Knowing any language imperfectly

  Knowledge is like power in this respect

  Knowledge: either despise it, or think that they have enough

  Knowledge of a scholar with the manners of a courtier

  Known people pretend to vices they had not

  Knows what things are little, and what not

  Labor is the unavoidable fatigue of a necessary journey

  Labor more to put them in conceit with themselves

  Last beautiful varnish, which raises the colors

  Laughing, I must particularly warn you against it

  Lay down a method for everything, and stick to it inviolably

  Lazy mind, and the trifling, frivolous mind

  Learn to keep your own secrets

  Learn, if you can, the WHY and the WHEREFORE

  Leave the company, at least as soon as he is wished out of it

  Led, much oftener by little things than by great ones

  Less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in

  Let me see more of you in your letters

  Let them quietly enjoy their errors in taste

  Let nobody discover that you do know your own value

  Let nothing pass till you understand it

  Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote

  Life of ignorance is not only a very contemptible, but tiresome

  Listlessness and indolence are always blameable

  Little minds mistake little objects for great ones

  Little failings and weaknesses

  Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob

  Love with him, who they think is the most in love with them

  Loved without being despised, and feared without being hated

  Low company, most falsely and impudently, call pleasure

  Low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter

  Luther's disappointed avarice

  Machiavel

  Made him believe that the world was made for him

  Make a great difference between companions and friends

  Make himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet

  Make yourself necessary

  Make every man I met with like me, and every woman love me

  Man is dishonored by not resenting an affront

  Man or woman cannot resist an engaging exterior

  Man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry

  Man who is only good on holydays is good for very little

  Mangles what he mea
ns to carve

  Manner is full as important as the matter

  Manner of doing things is often more important

  Manners must adorn knowledge

  Many things which seem extremely probable are not true

  Many are very willing, and very few able

  Mastery of one's temper

  May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer!

  May you rather die before you cease to be fit to live

  May not forget with ease what you have with difficulty learned

  Mazarin and Lewis the Fourteenth riveted the shackles

  Meditation and reflection

  Mere reason and good sense is never to be talked to a mob

  Merit and goodbreeding will make their way everywhere

  Method

  Mistimes or misplaces everything

  Mitigating, engaging words do by no means weaken your argument

  MOB: Understanding they have collectively none

  Moderation with your enemies

  Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise

  Money, the cause of much mischief

  More people have ears to be tickled, than understandings to judge

  More one sees, the less one either wonders or admires

  More you know, the modester you should be

  More one works, the more willing one is to work

  Mortifying inferiority in knowledge, rank, fortune

  Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends

  Most long talkers single out some one unfortunate man in company

  Most ignorant are, as usual, the boldest conjecturers

  Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears

  Much sooner forgive an injustice than an insult

  My own health varies, as usual, but never deviates into good

  Mystical nonsense

  Name that we leave behind at one place often gets before us

  National honor and interest have been sacrificed to private

  Necessity of scrupulously preserving the appearances

  Neglect them in little things, they will leave you in great

  Negligence of it implies an indifference about pleasing

  Neither know nor care, (when I die) for I am very weary

  Neither abilities or words enough to call a coach

  Neither retail nor receive scandal willingly

  Never would know anything that he had not a mind to know

  Never read history without having maps

  Never affect the character in which you have a mind to shine

  Never implicitly adopt a character upon common fame

  Never seek for wit; if it presents itself, well and good

  Never to speak of yourself at all

  Never slattern away one minute in idleness

  Never quit a subject till you are thoroughly master of it

  Never maintain an argument with heat and clamor

  Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with

  Never saw a froward child mended by whipping

  Never to trust implicitly to the informations of others

  Nipped in the bud

  No great regard for human testimony

  No man is distrait with the man he fears, or the woman he loves

  No one feels pleasure, who does not at the same time give it

  Not tumble, but slide gently to the bottom of the hill of life

  Not to communicate, prematurely, one's hopes or one's fears

  Not only pure, but, like Caesar's wife, unsuspected

  Not make their want still worse by grieving and regretting them

  Not making use of any one capital letter

  Not to admire anything too much

  Not one minute of the day in which you do nothing at all

  Notes by which dances are now pricked down as well as tunes

  Nothing in courts is exactly as it appears to be

  Nothing much worth either desiring or fearing

  Nothing so precious as time, and so irrecoverable when lost

  Observe, without being thought an observer

  Often more necessary to conceal contempt than resentment

  Often necessary, not to manifest all one feels

  Often necessary to seem ignorant of what one knows

  Oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings

  Old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not

  One must often yield, in order to prevail

  Only doing one thing at a time

  Only because she will not, and not because she cannot

  Only solid and lasting peace, between a man and his wife

  Our understandings are generally the DUPES of our hearts

  Our frivolous dissertations upon the weather, or upon whist

  Out of livery; which makes them both impertinent and useless

  Outward air of modesty to all he does

  Overvalue what we do not know

  Oysters, are only in season in the R months

  Passes for a wit, though he hath certainly no uncommon share

  Patience is the only way not to make bad worse

  Patient toleration of certain airs of superiority

  Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company

  Pay them with compliments, but not with confidence

  People never desire all till they have gotten a great deal

  People lose a great deal of time by reading

  People will repay, and with interest too, inattention

  People angling for praise

  People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority

  Perfection of everything that is worth doing at all

  Perseverance has surprising effects

  Person to you whom I am very indifferent about, I mean myself

  Pettish, pouting conduct is a great deal too young

  Petty jury

  Plain notions of right and wrong

  Planted while young, that degree of knowledge now my refuge

  Please all who are worth pleasing; offend none

  Pleased to some degree by showing a desire to please

  Pleased with him, by making them first pleased with themselves

  Pleasing in company is the only way of being pleased in yourself

  Pleasure and business with equal inattention

  Pleasure is necessarily reciprocal

  Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon

  Pleasures do not commonly last so long as life

  Pocket all your knowledge with your watch

  Polite, but without the troublesome forms and stiffness

  POLITICIANS NEITHER LOVE NOR HATE

  Prefer useful to frivolous conversations

  Prejudices are our mistresses

  Pride remembers it forever

  Pride of being the first of the company

  Prudent reserve

 

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