Lord Chesterfield Quotes

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

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.

Ties of blood are not always ties of friendship; but friendship founded on merit, on esteem, and on mutual trust, becomes more vital and more tender when strengthened by the ties of blood.

The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

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

People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.

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

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.

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

A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.

The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.

For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.

Women are all so far Machiavellians that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation.

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

Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.

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

In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.

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.

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.

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

Wrongs are often forgiven; but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.

When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.

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

A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.

Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.

Ridicule is the best test of truth.

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.

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.'

All I desire for my own burial, is not to be buried alive; but how or where, I think, must be entirely indifferent to every rational creature.

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

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.

The most ignorant are the boldest conjecturers.

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.

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

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

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

I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.

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.

To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.

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

There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.

Silence and reserve suggest latent power. What some men think has more effect than what others say.

In the course of the world, a man must very often put on an easy, frank countenance, upon very disagreeable occasions; he must seem pleased, when he is very much otherwise; he must be able to accost and receive with smiles, those whom he would much rather meet with swords.

How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?

One man affirms that he has rode post a hundred miles in six hours; probably it is a lie; but supposing it to be true, what then? Why, he is a very good post-boy; that is all. Another asserts, and probably not without oaths, that he has drunk six or eight bottles of wine at a sitting; out of charity I will believe him a liar; for if I do not, I must think him a beast.

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