If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself. – Lord Chesterfield
Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another. – Lord Chesterfield
If you can once engage peoples pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you. – Lord Chesterfield
I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive. – Lord Chesterfield
What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero. – Pablo Picasso