lord chesterfield

• there is no living in the world without a complaisant indulgence for people's weaknesses, and innocent, though ridiculous vanities. if a man has a mind to be thought wiser, and a woman handsomer, than they really are, their error is a comfortable one to themselves, and an innocent one with regard to other people; and ı would rather make them my friends by indulging them in it it, than my enemies, by endeavouring, and that to no purpose, to undeceive them.
  
  (bkz: lord chesterfield, letters written to his natural son on manners and morals)