Lord Chesterfield Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latterdeserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious. — 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

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

To please people is a great step towards persuading them. — Lord Chesterfield

Seek always for the best words and the happiest expression you can find. — Lord Chesterfield

Mankind is made up of inconsistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest sometimes wisely. — Lord Chesterfield

The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion. — Lord Chesterfield

Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold. — Lord Chesterfield

The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and bodies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run downby much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces. — Lord Chesterfield

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

Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you. — Lord Chesterfield

Our self-love is mortified, when we think our opinions, and even our tastes, customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemned;as, on the contrary, it is tickled and flattered by approbation. — Lord Chesterfield

Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes. — 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

The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take common sense quantum sufficit; add a little application to the rules and orders of the House [of Commons], throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface. — Lord Chesterfield

The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments. People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel. — Lord Chesterfield

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

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

Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way to merit that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties. — Lord Chesterfield

Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word. — Lord Chesterfield

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

Deserve a great deal, and you shall have a great deal; deserve little, and you shall have but a little; and be good for nothing atall, and I assure you, you shall have nothing at all. — Lord Chesterfield

Six, or at most seven, hours' sleep is, for a constancy, as much as you or anybody else can want; more is only laziness and dozing, and is, I am persuaded, both unwholesome and stupefying. — Lord Chesterfield

When I reflect upon what I have seen, what I have heard, what I have done, I can hardly persuade myself that all that frivolous hurry and bustle and pleasure of the world had any reality; and I look on what has passed as one of those wild dreams which opium occasions, and I by no means wish to repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the fugitive illusion. — Lord Chesterfield

Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse. — Lord Chesterfield

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. — Lord Chesterfield

Little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge and are incapable of feeling te pleasure of forgiving their enemies. — Lord Chesterfield

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

The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom. — Lord Chesterfield

It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon. — Lord Chesterfield

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

There are some occasions when a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest. — Lord Chesterfield

Many new years you may see, but happy ones you cannot see without deserving them. These virtue, honor, and knowledge alone can merit, alone can produce. — Lord Chesterfield

In the ordinary course of things, how many succeed in society merely by virtue of their manners, while others, however meritorious, fail through lack of them? After all, it's only barbarians who wear uncut precious stones. — Lord Chesterfield

Never write down your speeches beforehand; if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater. — Lord Chesterfield

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

Not to care for philosophy is to be a true philospher. — Lord Chesterfield

The greatest powers cannot injure a man's character whose reputation is unblemished among his party. — Lord Chesterfield

Real friendship is a slow grower. — Lord Chesterfield

A man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs, and vulgar aphorisms; uses neither favourite words nor hard words, but takes great care to speak very correctly and grammatically, and to pronounce properly; that is, according to the usage of the best companies. — Lord Chesterfield

A man who owes a little can clear it off in a very little time, and, if he is a prudent man, will; whereas a man, who by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all. — Lord Chesterfield

An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions. — Lord Chesterfield

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

Cultivate the habit of thinking ahead, and of anticipating the necessary and immediate consequences of all your actions ... Likewise in your pleasures, ask yourself what such and such an amusement leads to, as it is essential to have an objective in everything you do. Any pastime that contributes nothing to bodily strength or to mental alertness is a totally ridiculous, not to say, idiotic, pleasure. — Lord Chesterfield

The possibility of remedying imprudent actions is commonly an inducement to commit them. — Lord Chesterfield

Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds. — Lord Chesterfield

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

Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty. — Lord Chesterfield

Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice. — Lord Chesterfield

A certain degree of fear produces the same effects as rashness. — Lord Chesterfield

Women especially as to be talked to as below men, and above children. — Lord Chesterfield

Most arts require long study and application; but the most useful of all, that of pleasing, only the desire. — Lord Chesterfield

Whoever plays deep must necessarily lose his money or his character. — Lord Chesterfield

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

There are people who indulge themselves in a sort of lying, which they reckon innocent, and which in one sense is so; for it hurtsnobody but themselves. This sort of lying is the spurious offspring of vanity, begotten upon folly. — Lord Chesterfield

A learned parson, rusting in his cell at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well on the nature of man; will profoundly analyse the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, he knows nothing of man ... He views man as he does colours in Sir Isaac Newton's prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures. — Lord Chesterfield

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

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

Lady
is safely delivered of a son, to the great joy of that noble family. The expression, of a woman's having brought her husband a son, seems to be a proper and cautious one; for it is never said, from whence. — Lord Chesterfield

Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch their judgments, such as they are. — Lord Chesterfield

Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance. — Lord Chesterfield

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. — Lord Chesterfield

Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. — 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

Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners. — Lord Chesterfield

Women of fashion and character
I do not mean absolutely unblemished
are a necessary ingredient in the composition of good company; the attention which they require, and which is always paid them by well-bred men, keeps up politeness, and gives a habit of good-breeding; whereas men, when they live together without the lenitive of women in company, are apt to grow careless, negligent, and rough among one another. — Lord Chesterfield

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

We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence. — Lord Chesterfield

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

I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general; one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers. — Lord Chesterfield

The greatest dangers have their allurements, if the want of success is likely to be attended with a degree of glory. Middling dangers are horrid, when the loss of reputation is the inevitable consequence of ill success. — Lord Chesterfield

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

The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment. — Lord Chesterfield

Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all. — Lord Chesterfield

Give Dayrolles a chair. — Lord Chesterfield

A man who cannot command his temper should not think of being a man in business. — Lord Chesterfield

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat. — Lord Chesterfield

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

Women, then, are only children of a larger growth — Lord Chesterfield

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. — Lord Chesterfield

In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable. — Lord Chesterfield

Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is. — Lord Chesterfield

Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it. — Lord Chesterfield

Never yield to that temptation, which, to most young men, is very strong, of exposing other people's weaknesses and infirmities, for the sake either of diverting the company, or of showing your own superiority. You may get the laugh on your side by it for the present; but you will make enemies by it for ever; and even those who laugh with you then, will, upon reflection, fear, and consequently hate you. — Lord Chesterfield

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

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

Vulgarism in language is the distinguishing characteristic of bad company, and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that. Proverbial expressions, and trite sayings, are the flowers of the rhetoric of vulgar man. — Lord Chesterfield

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

A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another. — Lord Chesterfield

Ugliness is a letter of credit for some special purposes. — Lord Chesterfield

I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country [England], that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great many words of two dead languages, which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are of no use in the common intercourse of life. Useful knowledge, in my opinion, consists of modern languages, history, and geography; some Latin may be thrown into the bargain, in compliance with custom, and for closet amusement. — Lord Chesterfield

Unlike my subject will I frame my song, It shall be witty and it shan't be long. — Lord Chesterfield

Take the tone of the company you are in. — Lord Chesterfield

Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience; which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and ineffective. — Lord Chesterfield

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

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

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends. — Lord Chesterfield