Top 100 Lord Chesterfield Quotes
#1. Lord Chesterfield advises his son "to speak often, but not to speak much at a time; so that if he does not please, he will not at least displease to any great extent."
Rousseau tells us, that, "persons who know little, talk a great deal, while those who know a great deal say very little.
Arthur Martine
#2. Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well." ~Lord Chesterfield, Letter to His God Son
Dawn Flowers
#3. A lifelong disciple of Lord Chesterfield's maxim that a gentleman was free to do anything he pleased as long as he did it with style.
Joseph J. Ellis
#4. As Lord Chesterfield said of the generals of his day, 'I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.'
Duke Of Wellington
#5. Lord Chesterfield designated ugly women as the third sex; how shall we place ugly men.
Anna Cora Mowatt
#6. An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.
Lord Chesterfield
#7. The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge.
Lord Chesterfield
#8. Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.
Lord Chesterfield
#9. Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.
Lord Chesterfield
#10. Every man becomes, to a certain degree, what the people he generally converses with are.
Lord Chesterfield
#11. Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.
Lord Chesterfield
#12. Give nobly to indigent merit, and do not refuse your charity even to those who have not merit but their misery.
Lord Chesterfield
#13. May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer, or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after!
Lord Chesterfield
#14. A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have nothing told him.
Lord Chesterfield
#15. The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.
Lord Chesterfield
#16. Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires.
Lord Chesterfield
#17. I love every-day senses, every-day wit and entertainment; a man who is only good on holidays, is good for very little.
Lord Chesterfield
#18. A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be; and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not.
Lord Chesterfield
#19. Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
#20. So much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day than a regular and consequential character.
Lord Chesterfield
#21. The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic.
Lord Chesterfield
#22. Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.
Lord Chesterfield
#23. I do not think that a Physician should be admitted into the College till he could bring proofs of his having cured, in his own person, at least four incurable distempers.
Lord Chesterfield
#24. An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions.
Lord Chesterfield
#25. Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
Lord Chesterfield
#26. Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained.
Lord Chesterfield
#27. Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.
Lord Chesterfield
#28. Women are all so far Machiavellians that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation.
Lord Chesterfield
#30. This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords.
Samuel Johnson
#31. Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.
Lord Chesterfield
#32. Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.
Lord Chesterfield
#33. A man of sense soon discovers, because he carefully observes, where and how long he is welcome; and takes care to leave the company at least as soon as he is wished out of it. Fools never perceive whether they are ill timed or ill placed.
Lord Chesterfield
#34. Study the heart and the mind of man, and begin with your own. Meditation and reflection must lay the foundation of that knowledge, but experience and practice must, and alone can, complete it.
Lord Chesterfield
#35. If originally it was not good for a man to be alone, it is much worse for a sick man to be so; he thinks too much of his distemper, and magnifies it.
Lord Chesterfield
#36. Though we cannot totally change our nature, we may in great measure correct it by reflection and philosophy; and some philosophy is a very necessary companion in this world, where, even to the most fortunate, the chances are greatly against happiness.
Lord Chesterfield
#38. True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself.
Lord Chesterfield
#39. This is the day when people reciprocally offer, and receive, the kindest and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meaning them on one side, or believing them on the other. They are formed by the head, in compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of nature.
Lord Chesterfield
#41. It is hard to say which is the greatest fool: he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.
Lord Chesterfield
#42. You must labour to acquire that great and uncommon talent of hating with good breeding, and loving with prudence; to make no quarrel irreconcilable by silly and unnecessary indications of anger; and no friendship dangerous, in care it breaks, by a wanton, indiscreet, and unreserved confidence.
Lord Chesterfield
#43. A vulgar man is captious and jealous; eager and impetuous about trifles. He suspects himself to be slighted, and thinks everything that is said meant at him.
Lord Chesterfield
#44. Let us not only scatter benefits, but even strew flowers for our fellow-travellers, in the rugged ways of this wretched world.
Lord Chesterfield
#45. Either a good or a bad reputation outruns and gets before people wherever they go.
Lord Chesterfield
#46. All ceremonies are in themselves very silly things; but yet, a man of the world should know them. They are the outworks of Mannersand Decency, which would be too often broken in upon, if it were not for that defence, which keeps the enemy at a proper distance.
Lord Chesterfield
#47. Little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge and are incapable of feeling te pleasure of forgiving their enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
#48. The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.
Lord Chesterfield
#50. If a man, notoriously and designedly, insults and affronts you, knock him down; but if he only injures you, your best revenge is to be extremely civil to him in your outward behaviour, though at the same time you counterwork him, and return him the compliment, perhaps with interest.
Lord Chesterfield
#51. Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness; for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.
Lord Chesterfield
#53. If you will please people, you must please them in their own way; and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.
Lord Chesterfield
#54. Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement; I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not.
Lord Chesterfield
#55. He adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote upon, by the most splendid eloquence.
Lord Chesterfield
#57. The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; they will both fall into the ditch.
Lord Chesterfield
#58. Mind not only what people say, but how they say it; and if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will; and their looks frequently (reveal) what their words are calculated to conceal.
Lord Chesterfield
#59. Deafness produces bizarre effects, reversing the natural order of things; the interchange of letters is the conversation of the deaf, and the only link with society. I would be in despair, for instance, over seeing you speak, but, instead, I am only too happy to hear you write.
Lord Chesterfield
#60. Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.
Lord Chesterfield
#63. Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me.
Lord Chesterfield
#64. You must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him down.
Lord Chesterfield
#66. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.
Lord Chesterfield
#67. Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their age
Lord Chesterfield
#68. To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition; provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.
Lord Chesterfield
#69. We are hardly ever grateful for a fine clock or watch when it goes right, and we pay attention to it only when it falters, for then we are caught by surprise. It ought to be the other way about.
Lord Chesterfield
#70. Never hold anyone by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.
Lord Chesterfield
#71. Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.
Lord Chesterfield
#72. A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the pox content which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution.
Lord Chesterfield
#73. Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
Lord Chesterfield
#74. A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life.
Lord Chesterfield
#75. A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.
Lord Chesterfield
#76. Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known.
Lord Chesterfield
#77. Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self; the second in a compelled recollection of others.
Lord Chesterfield
#78. Sexual intercourse is a grossly overrated pastime; the position is undignified, the pleasure momentary and the consequences damnable.
Lord Chesterfield
#79. To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.
Lord Chesterfield
#80. There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.
Lord Chesterfield
#81. I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.
Lord Chesterfield
#83. Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.
Lord Chesterfield
#84. Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.
Lord Chesterfield
#85. Firmness of purpose is one of the best instruments of success.
Lord Chesterfield
#86. Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes.
Lord Chesterfield
#87. The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.
Lord Chesterfield
#89. 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
#90. I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments.
Lord Chesterfield
#91. The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.
Lord Chesterfield
#92. Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.
Lord Chesterfield
#93. Smooth your way to the head, through the heart. The way of reason is a good one; but it is commonly something longer, and perhapsnot so sure.
Lord Chesterfield
#94. I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.
Lord Chesterfield
#95. All I can say, in answer to this kind queries [of friends] is that I have not the distemper called the Plague; but that I have allthe plagues of old age, and of a shattered carcase.
Lord Chesterfield
#96. Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.
Lord Chesterfield
#97. Business by no means forbids pleasures; on the contrary, they reciprocally season each other; and I will venture to affirm that noman enjoys either in perfection that does not join both.
Lord Chesterfield
#98. Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.
Lord Chesterfield
#99. People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says vry justly, 'Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.'
Lord Chesterfield
#100. The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.
Lord Chesterfield
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