Lord Chesterfield Quotes (132 Quotes)

Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in a mixed company.

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.

Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked.

Whenever I go to an opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and my ears

Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.

I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.

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.

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.

To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake

Take care in your minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves.

We are, in truth, more than half of what we are by imitation

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,

Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life returns are equally expected for both

Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.

Swallow all your learning in the morning, but digest it in company in the evenings

Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years but we don't choose to have it known.

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.

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.

The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon his dress; and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time he knows he must not neglect it.

Do as you would be done by is the surest method of pleasing

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.

No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint

Take the tone of the company you are in.

Most people have ears, but few have judgment tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch those judgments, such as they are

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.

Idleness is the only refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools

Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.

Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.

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

Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.

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.

In those days he was wiser than he is now - he used frequently to take my advice.

Character must be kept bright as well as clean.

The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease the manner of a gentleman, ease without freedom

The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.

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

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.

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.

Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

To govern mankind, one must not overrate them.

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

The scholar without good breeding is a nitpicker the philosopher a cynic the soldier a brute and everyone else disagreeable.

Pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and never pull it out in company unless desired

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.

A constant smirk upon the face, and a whiffing activity of the body, are strong indications of futility.

While I can crawl upon this planet I think myself obliged to do what good I can, in my narrow domestic spheres, to my fellow creatures, and to wish them all the good I cannot do

As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.