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-a-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.

Never get acquainted with your next-door neighbour, unless you find he
is in good pecuniary circumstances. If you meet on the highway, or touch
elbows at your respective fore-doors, look at each other like two
strange tom-cats, and pursue your way.