Philip Stanhope (1694 – 1773)
British statesman and man of letters.
The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; “they will both fall into the ditch.”
People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.
Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.
Patience, to hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications: with address enough to refuse, without offending; or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation: dexterity enough to conceal a truth, without telling a lie: sagacity enough to read other people’s countenances: and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness, with a real reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar.
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 therfore one seldom does it at all.
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
Unlike my subject will I frame my song,
It shall be witty, and it shan't be long.
Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years; but we don't choose to have it known.
I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh.
I recommend to you, in my last, an innocent piece of art: that of flattering people behind their backs, in presence of those who, to make their own court, much more than for your sake, will not fail to repeat, and even amplify, the praise to the party concerned. This is of all flattery the most pleasing, and consequently the most effectual.
I recommend you to take care of the minutes: for hours will take care of themselves.
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.
Dispatch is the soul of business.
Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
Courts and camps are the only places to learn the world in.
I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.
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 pursuit of it. No, we are complicated machines; and though we have one main spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometime stop that motion.
Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.