The Beauties of Chesterfield

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Page 251 - People easily pardon, in young men, the common irregularities of the senses ; but they do not forgive the least vice of the heart. The heart never grows better by age ; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older. But should a bad young heart, accompanied with a good head, (which, by the way, very seldom is the case,) really reform in a more advanced age from a consciousness of its folly, as well as of its guilt,...
Page 221 - Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them ; for I will venture (contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep causes for great events) to ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough's greatness and riches to those graces.
Page 85 - I never saw him disguised with liquor in my life. It is true, he is a very large man, and can hold a great deal, which makes the colonel call him, pleasantly enough, a vessel of election.
Page 216 - ... respect, he is exactly the same to his superiors, his equals, and his inferiors ; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurd to two of the three. Is it possible to love such a man ? No. The utmost I can do for him, is to consider him as a respectable Hottentot.
Page 5 - What is commonly called an absent man, is commonly either a very weak, or a very affected man ; but be he which he will, he is, I am sure, a very disagreeable man in company.
Page 146 - ... in re. He may possibly, by great accident, now and then succeed, when he has only weak and timid people to deal with ; but his general fate will be, to shock, offend, be hated, and fail. On the other hand...
Page 260 - Every moment may be put to some use, and that with much more pleasure than if unemployed. Do not imagine that by the employment of .time, I mean an uninterrupted application to serious studies. No; pleasures are, at proper times, both as necessary and as useful; they fashion and form you for the world ; they teach you characters, and show you the human heart in its unguarded minutes.

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