"There is a great mistake in supposing that giving is concerned only with material benefits. These form indeed but a small part of its mission. Whoever creates happiness, whether by a kindly greeting, or tender sympathy, or inspiring presence, or stimulating thought, is as true a giver as he who empties his purse to feed the hungry."
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.
Lord Chesterfield.
"Tact, though partly a natural gift, is a good deal indebted to education and early habits. The superiority of one sex to the other in this respect will often be found to depend on art quite as much as upon nature."
"Never is silence more eloquent than when it is preserved toward persons older than ourselves when they voice opinions long since proven erroneous. Age doesn't like to be contradicted, right or wrong."
In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man: not to be impulsive, not to be spurred hither and thither by each desire that in turn comes uppermost; but to be restrained, self-balanced, governed by the joint decision of the feelings in council assembled, before whom every action shall have been fully debated and calmly determined.