Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked.

Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.

—Lord Chesterfield

Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.

—Lord Chesterfield

Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.

—Lord Chesterfield

He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves.

—Lord Chesterfield

[Common sense] is the best sense I know of.

—Lord Chesterfield

Much learning does not teach understanding.

—Heraclitus

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.

—George Santayana

Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.

—George Iles

Whoso neglects learning in his youth,
Loses the past and is dead for the future.

—Euripides

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

—Doris Lessing