You may keep a running horse, or two, though you are a magistrate sworn to put down gambling: you need not bet upon the race-course yourself. You may subscribe to Fishmongers' Hall, and go there without throwing the dice. You may share the profits of a roulette table, without venturing your luck. It is strange that vulgar understandings cannot discriminate in these matters!
When you have made up your mind finally to do any thing, ask the advice of your friend about it. The act of consultation will please him, and you will be none the worse.
Human happiness is more or less complete in a ratio with successful pecuniary accumulation.
If you enter a drawing-room before dinner a little time too early, and find yourself vis-à-vis with an unlucky visiter as forlorn as yourself, do not utter a word. The chances are, nine out of ten, he will not speak first, that is, if he be a true Briton. Stare at him as hard as you can.
If you meet a lady in society, old or young, married or single, who equals you in argument, or rises superior to the thousand and one automatons disgorged monthly from fashionable boarding-schools, report her a bas bleu to your male acquaintances, and warn her own sex to shun her.
When you meet an inferior in a public street, it is your duty to cut him, if any one who knows you is in sight. If you cannot escape a recognition, do it with as little parade as possible—a movement of the lips is sufficient—and walk on at a quick rate. Who knows but the Lord Mayor, or Mr. Alderman Blowbladder, may observe you?
A grain of impudence will fetch more in the market than twelve bushels of modesty.
In the scale of dignities two Cheapside chaises make one Stanhope; two Stanhopes a cab; two cabs a landaulet and pair; and so on up to the state-coach; and as their numerical relation, so is the degree of respect they may justly exact.
If you visit foreign parts, and meet a countryman who may be useful to you, do not hesitate to avail yourself of his services; but be sure never to acknowledge him should you meet in your native land, unless he receive some other introduction to you, and you have it on creditable evidence that he is a man of good property.
Never allow reason weight in any thing you have resolved to be right that is opposed to it. Reason may be useful in mathematics, to men of genius, and to scholars; but it has little to do with every-day existence, with the Three per Cents, the national revenue, the Stock Exchange, or the India House.