Lord Chesterfield Quotes

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.

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

Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.

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.

Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder.

Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.

Health ... is the first and greatest of all blessings.

You must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him down.

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.

Ceremony is necessary in Courts, as the outwork and defense of manners.

Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.

Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct--never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike.

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.

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

Gratitude is a burden upon our imperfect nature.

I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.

If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.

One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.

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.

Not to care for philosophy is to be a true philospher.

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

Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.

Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.

Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.

In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.

The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.

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.

The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic.

The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.

The more one works, the more willing one is to work.

A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.

Most arts require long study and application, but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.

Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.

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.

If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching.

Every man becomes, to a certain degree, what the people he generally converses with are.

Ceremonies are the outworks of manners.

It is often more necessary to conceal contempt than resentment; the former is never forgiven, but the later is sometimes forgotten.

If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

Let us not only scatter benefits, but even strew flowers for our fellow-travellers, in the rugged ways of this wretched world.

An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions. He is neither hot nor timid.

He adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote upon, by the most splendid eloquence.

To please people is a great step towards persuading them.

An honest man may really love a pretty girl, but only an idiot marries her merely because she is pretty.

I assisted at the birth of that most significant word "flirtation," which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world.

Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.

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.

Many people come into company full of what they intend to say in it themselves, without the least regard to others; and thus charged up to the muzzle are resolved to let it off at any rate.