I’ve just started reading the letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son over at Project Gutenberg. I have not dug far into it, but the book is very interesting in several respects. One, as these are private letters to his son, the subject matter is candid and honest. Two, as Lord Chesterfield intends to educate his son on the finer points of manhood and engagement in society (ie. the role of the gentleman) he makes many noteworthy observations and presents essentially a work of practical social philosophy. From the very beginning, it is insightful and thought-provoking:
If care and application are necessary to the acquiring of those
qualifications, without which you can never be considerable, nor make a
figure in the world, they are not less necessary with regard to the
lesser accomplishments, which are requisite to make you agreeable and
pleasing in society. In truth, whatever is worth doing at all, is worth
doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention: I therefore
carry the necessity of attention down to the lowest things, even to
dancing and dress. Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a
young man; therefore mind it while you learn it that you may learn to do
it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act. Dress is of
the same nature; you must dress; therefore attend to it; not in order to
rival or to excel a fop in it, but in order to avoid singularity, and
consequently ridicule. Take great care always to be dressed like the
reasonable people of your own age, in the place where you are; whose
dress is never spoken of one way or another, as either too negligent or
too much studied.