“I recommend to you, in my last, an innocent piece of art: that of flattering people behind their backs, in presence of those who, to make their own court, much more than for your sake, will not fail to repeat, and even amplify, the praise to the party concerned. This is of all flattery the most pleasing, and consequently the most effectual.”

—  Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

22 May 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield 65
British statesman and man of letters 1694–1773

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