A Quote by Lord Chesterfield

Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold. — © Lord Chesterfield
Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain; and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.
There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefor, when it falls, a fiercer devil.
My treasure chest is filled with gold. Gold . . . gold . . . gold . . . Vagabond's gold and drifter's gold . . . Worthless, priceless, dreamer's gold . . . Gold of the sunset . . . gold of the dawn . . .Gold of the showertrees on my lawn . . . Poet's gold and artist's gold . . . Gold that can not be bought or sold - Gold.
... is there anything more unjust than to build gold and brass and iron on poor, well-meaning clay, -- and then blame the clay when the whole image falls into dust?
But what's worth more than gold?" "Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren't you worth more than that?
The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.
Test of Metal: Will of Iron, Nerves of Steel, Heart of Gold, Balls of Brass.
Brass is polished by ashes; copper is cleaned by tamarind; a woman, by her menses; and a river by its flow.
My mother kept all my awards on the sideboard of her front room, and she polished them. She polished everything religiously. And it doesn't take long for the very thin layer of gold to disappear and the base metal underneath to show through.
The Park Avenue of poodles and polished brass; it is cab country, tip-town, glassville, a window-washer's paradise.
Creative people tend to pass the responsibility for getting down to brass tacks to others.
Over the past decade or so, you have seen the flip side of that as you've seen stock prices have come down a lot relative to gold. Now you are getting a change where people are more comfortable holding gold because in the rear-view mirror it doesn't look so bad for gold. Bonds have not come down as much relative to gold, but I think the bond bubble is going to burst and will be falling for years too. And gold will look that much better.
But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever - provided, naturally, that you don't go and look. This is known as finance.
About life: "It is not complicated unless I make it so. It is not difficult unless I allow it to be. A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass. Don't force or fear, don't control or lose control. Don't fight and don't stop fighting. Embrace and endure. If you embrace, you will endure.
Five hundred words a day is what I aim for. And I don't go on to the next chapter until I've polished and polished and polished the one I'm working on.
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