A cheerful, easy countenance and behavior are very useful at court; they make fools think you are a good-natured man; and they make designing men think you are an undesigning one.
There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest; but there is seldom one in which a man should tell it all. Great skill is necessary to know how far to go, and where to stop.
Ceremony is necessary in courts, as the outwork and defence of manners.
Flattery, though a base coin, is the necessary pocket-money at court; where, by custom and consent, it has obtained such a currency, that it is no longer a fraudulent, but a legal payment.
If a minister refuses you a reasonable request, and either slights or injures you, if you have not the power to gratify your resentment, have the wisdom to conceal and dissemble it. Seeming good humor on your part may prevent rancor on his, and perhaps bring things aright again: but if you have the power to hurt, hint modestly that, if provoked, you may possibly have the will too. Fear, when real, and well founded, is perhaps a more prevailing motive at courts than love.
At court, many more people can hurt, than can help you; please the former, but engage the latter.
Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.
A man’s own good breeding is his best security against other people’s ill-manners.
Good breeding carries along with it a dignity, that is respected by the most petulant. Ill breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duke of Marlborough. No man ever said a civil one (though many a flattering one) to Sir Robert Walpole.
When the old clipped money was called in for a new coinage in King William’s time, to prevent the like for the future, they stamped on the edges of the crown pieces these words, et decus et tutamen. That is exactly the case of good breeding.