Top 364 Quotes & Sayings by Lord Chesterfield - Page 6

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

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.

Real merit of any kind cannot long be concealed; it will be discovered, and nothing can depreciate it but a man exhibiting it himself. It may not always be rewarded as it ought; but it will always be known.

The law before us, my lords, seems to be the effect of that practice of which it is intended likewise to be the cause, and to be dictated by the liquor of which it so effectually promotes the use; for surely it never before was conceived by any man entrusted with the administration of public affairs, to raise taxes by the destruction of the people.

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

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.

A certain degree of ceremony is a necessary outwork of manners, as well as of religion; it keeps the forward and petulant at a proper distance, and is a very small restraint to the sensible and to the well-bred part of the world.

Real friendship is a slow grower.

Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.

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

A vulgar man is captious and jealous; eager and impetuous about trifles. He suspects himself to be slighted, and thinks everything that is said meant at him.

Dispatch is the soul of business.

Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different.

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.

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

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.

In your friendships and in your enmities let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds; make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business.

Ridicule is the best test of truth.

I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow [perhaps William Lowndes], who used to say, `Take care of the pence, for the pounds will take care of themselves.

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

Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.

It is to be presumed, that a man of common sense, who does not desire to please, desires nothing at all; since he must know that he cannot obtain anything without it.

Wear your knowledge like your watch - in you pocket - and don't pull it out just for show.

Study the heart and the mind of man, and begin with your own. Meditation and reflection must lay the foundation of that knowledge, but experience and practice must, and alone can, complete it.

There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.

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.

It is reported here that the King of Prussia has gone mad and has been locked up. There would be nothing bad about that: at leastthat might of his would no longer be a menace, and you could breathe freely for a while. I much prefer madmen who are locked up to those who are not.

If originally it was not good for a man to be alone, it is much worse for a sick man to be so; he thinks too much of his distemper, and magnifies it.

All I can say, in answer to this kind queries [of friends] is that I have not the distemper called the Plague; but that I have allthe plagues of old age, and of a shattered carcase.

A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit.

Business by no means forbids pleasures; on the contrary, they reciprocally season each other; and I will venture to affirm, that no man enjoys either in perfection that does not join both.

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.

A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.

There is a certain jargon, which, in French, I should call un Persiflage d'Affaires, that a foreign Minister ought to be perfectlymaster of, and may be used very advantageously at great entertainments, in mixed companies, and in all occasions where he must speak, and should say nothing. Well turned and well spoken, it seems to mean something, though in truth it means nothing. It is a kind of political badinage, which prevents or removes a thousand difficulties, to which a foreign Minister is exposed in mixed conversations.

Were you to converse with a king, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own valet-de chambre; but yet every look,word, and action should imply the utmost respect.... You must wait till you are spoken to; you must receive, not give, the subject of conversation, and you must even take care that the given subject of such conversation do not lead you into any impropriety.

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.

Every man is to be had one way or another and every woman almost anyway.

Elegance of manner is the outgrowth of refined and exalted sense.

When you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned.

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.

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

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.

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

Learning is acquired by reading books; much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.

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

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

A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the pox content which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution.

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.

Those who see and observe kings, heroes, and statesmen, discover that they have headaches, indigestion, humors and passions, just like other people; every one of which in their turns determine their wills in defiance of their reason.

No woman ever yet either reasoned or acted long together consequentially; but some little thing, some love, some resentment, somepresent momentary interest, some supposed slight, or some humour, always breaks in upon, and oversets their most prudent resolutions and schemes.

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true Wit or good Sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore often seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.

Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires.

It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is anoptimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness--physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.

There is a sort of veteran women of condition, who, having lived always in the grand mode, and having possibly had some gallantries, together with the experience of five and twenty or thirty years, form a young fellow better than all the rules that can be given him.

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

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

People hate who makes you feel one's inferiority.

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

A foreign minister, I will maintain it, can never be a good man of business if he is not an agreeable man of pleasure too. Half his business is done by the help of his pleasures: his views are carried on, and perhaps best, and most unsuspectedly, at balls, suppers, assemblies, and parties of pleasure; by intrigues with women, and connections insensibly formed with men, at those unguarded hours of amusement.

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