Lord Chesterfield quotes
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If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
You must look into people, as well as at them.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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You must be respectable, if you will be respected.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
If you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away?
-- Lord Chesterfield -
In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Firmness of purpose is one of the best instruments of success.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Few people do business well who do nothing else
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Prepare yourself for the world, as athletes used to do for their exercises; oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Health ... is the first and greatest of all blessings.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Style is the dress of thoughts, and let them be ever so just.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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 -
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way through the world.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Common sense is the best sense I know of.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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 -
Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Regularity in the hours of rising and retiring, perseverance in exercise, adaptation of dress to the variations of climate, simple and nutritious aliment, and temperance in all things are necessary branches of the regimen of health.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it, genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
I am convinced that a light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man, who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and rainy morning, would have proved a coward.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way in the world, without them it is like a great rough diamond, very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but most prized when polished.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life; some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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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 -
Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. It implies a discovery of weakness, which we are more careful to conceal than a crime. Many a man will confess his crimes to a friend; but I never knew a man that would tell his silly weaknesses to his most intimate one.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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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 -
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 -
The more one works, the more willing one is to work.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
It is commonly said that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrevocable.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Unlike my subject will I frame my song, It shall be witty and it shan't be long.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
I wish... that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
He adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote upon, by the most splendid eloquence.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have nothing told him.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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A man who cannot command his temper should not think of being a man in business.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Seek always for the best words and the happiest expression you can find.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
... to me it appears strange that the men against whom I should be enabled to bring an action for laying a little dirt at my door, may with impunity drive by it half-a-dozen calves, with their tails lopped close to their bodies and their hinder parts covered with blood ......
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Women, then, are only children of a larger growth
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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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 -
No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Fear manifested invites danger...
-- Lord Chesterfield -
The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary; but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveler.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own; for men in general are very much alike, and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same; and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases, or offends you in others will engage, disgust, please or offend others in you.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
We are in truth, more than half what we are by imitation. The great point is to choose good models and to study them with care.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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 -
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I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow [perhaps William Lowndes], who used to say, `Take care of the pence, for the pounds will take care of themselves.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; "they will both fall into the ditch.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Women have, in general, but ne object, which is their beauty; upon which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to swallow.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other, and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Cautiously avoid speaking of the domestic affairs either of yourself, or of other people. Yours are nothing to them but tedious gossip; and theirs are nothing to you.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Few fathers care much for their sons, or at least, most of them care more for their money. Of those who really love their sons, few know how to do it.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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Wise people may say what they will, but one passion is never cured by another.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
You must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him down.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
Sexual intercourse is a grossly overrated pastime; the position is undignified, the pleasure momentary and the consequences damnable.
-- Lord Chesterfield -
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