Lord Chesterfield Quotes

Ugliness is a letter of credit for some special purposes.

Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.

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.

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.

Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.

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.

Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in mixed company; it should only be treated among a very few people of learning, for mutual instruction. It is too awful and respectable a subject to become a familiar one.

Give Dayrolles a chair.

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.

Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices thatmay accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.

In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak and speak with dignity too.

Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men; their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.

A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.

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

Enjoy pleasures, but let them be your own, and then you will taste them.

People hate who makes you feel one's inferiority.

Sincerity w the most compendious wisdom, an excellent instrument for the speedy despatch of business. It creates confidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labor of many inquiries, and brings things to an issue in few words.

The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.

Spirit is now a very fashionable word: to act with Spirit, to speak with Spirit, means only to act rashly, and to talk indiscreetly. An able man shows his Spirit by gentle words and resolute actions; he is neither hot nor timid.

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

Fear manifested invites danger.

A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have nothing told him.

At any age we must cherish illusions, consolatory or merely pleasant; in youth, they are omnipresent; in old age we must search for them, or even invent them. But with all that, boredom is their natural and inevitable accompaniment.

Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops; for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.

Keep your own secret, and get out other people's. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other people's. Counterwork your rivalswith diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.

The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.

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.

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

Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.

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.

Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.

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.

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

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.

Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.

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.

Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.

Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two--a proof of the decline of that country.

If a marriage is going to work well, it must be on a solid footing, namely money, and of that commodity it is the girl with the smallest dowry who, to my knowledge, consumes the most, to infuriate her husband. All the same, it is only fair that the marriage should pay for past pleasures, since it will scarcely procure any in the future.

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

Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.

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.

Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

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

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.

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

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