49 quotes
Every woman is infallibly to be gained by every sort of flattery, and every man by one sort or other.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Let dull critics feed upon the carcasses of plays; give me the taste and the dressing.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
I recommend you to take care of the minutes: for hours will take care of themselves.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
The manner is often as important as the matter, sometimes more so.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Take the tone of the company you are in.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Style is the dress of thoughts.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it to you.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Dispatch is the soul of business.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
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.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
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 pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
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.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
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.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
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.
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)