86. There is hardly any bodily blemish which a winning behavior will not conceal or make tolerable; and there is no external grace which ill-nature or affectation will not deform.
87. Good humor is the only shield to keep off the darts of the satirist; but if you are the first to laugh at a jest made upon yourself, others will laugh with you instead of at you.
88. Whenever you see a person insult his inferiors, you may feel assured that he is the man who will be servile and cringing to his superiors; and he who acts the bully to the weak, will play the coward when with the strong.
89. Maintain, in every word, a strict regard for perfect truth. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, another as slight, a third as unintended. Cast them all aside. They may be light and accidental, but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit for all that, and it is better to have your heart swept clean of them, without stopping to consider whether they are large and black.
90. The advantage and necessity of cheerfulness and intelligent intercourse with the world is strongly to be recommended. A man who keeps aloof from society and lives only for himself, does not fulfil the wise intentions of Providence, who designed that we should be a mutual help and comfort to each other in life.
91. Chesterfield says, “Merit and good breeding will make their way everywhere. Knowledge will introduce man, and good breeding will endear him to the best companies; for, politeness and good breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all, other good qualities or talents. Without them, no knowledge, no perfection whatever, is seen in its best light. The scholar, without good breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable.”
92. It is very seldom that a man may permit himself to tell stories in society; they are, generally, tedious, and, to many present, will probably have all the weariness of a “twice-told tale.” A short, brilliant anecdote, which is especially applicable to the conversation going on, is all that a well-bred man will ever permit himself to inflict.
93. It is better to take the tone of the society into which you are thrown, than to endeavor to lead others after you. The way to become truly popular is to be grave with the grave, jest with the gay, and converse sensibly with those who seek to display their sense.
94. Watch each of your actions, when in society, that all the habits which you contract there may be useful and good ones. Like flakes of snow that fall unperceived upon the earth, the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed one another. As the snow gathers together, so are our habits formed. No single flake that is added to the pile produces a sensible change—no single action creates, however it may exhibit, a man’s character; but, as the tempest hurls the avalanche down the mountain, and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so passion, acting upon the elements of mischief, which pernicious habits have brought together by imperceptible accumulation, may overthrow the edifice of truth and virtue.
95. There is no greater fault in good breeding than too great diffidence. Shyness cramps every motion, clogs every word. The only way to overcome the fault is to mix constantly in society, and the habitual intercourse with others will give you the graceful ease of manner which shyness utterly destroys.