Lord Chesterfield Quotations | Page 3

If you love music hear it; go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you; but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light; brings him into a great deal of bad company; and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.

No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.

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.

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

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

Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defense of manners.

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

An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.

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.

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

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

Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner.

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

A man of the best parts and greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will be probably so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue.

This is the day when people reciprocally offer, and receive, the kindest and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meaning them on one side, or believing them on the other. They are formed by the head, in compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of nature.

Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you.... Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth; that is the least consideration; but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.

Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.

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.

The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.

Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good breeding, asit is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good breeding of the place which he is at.

Many young people adopt pleasures for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name.... You mustallow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scraps, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure, is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body.

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.

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.

The late Président de Montesquieu told me that he knew how to be blind--he had been so for such a long time--but I swear that I do not know how to be deaf: I cannot get used to it, and I am as humiliated and distressed by it today as I was during the first week. No philosophy in the world can palliate deafness.

Violent measures are always dangerous, but, when necessary, may then be looked on as wise. They have, however, the advantage of never being matter of indifference; and, when well concerted, must be decisive.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Deafness produces bizarre effects, reversing the natural order of things; the interchange of letters is the conversation of the deaf, and the only link with society. I would be in despair, for instance, over seeing you speak, but, instead, I am only too happy to hear you write.

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.

Keep carefully not of all scrapes and quarrels. They lower a character extremely; and are particularly dangerous in France, wherea man is dishonoured by not resenting an affront, and utterly ruined by resenting it.

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.

Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.

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.

Women, then, are only children of a larger growth

Fear manifested invites danger...

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

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

The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.

I do not think that a Physician should be admitted into the College till he could bring proofs of his having cured, in his own person, at least four incurable distempers.

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

Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.

Whoever incites anger has a strong insurance against indifference.

Ridicule is the best test of truth.

Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.

In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.

It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therefore one seldom does it at all.

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

Honest error is to be pitied not ridiculed.

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.

Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.

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

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

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.

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person.

I wish... that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it.

It is good breeding alone that can prepossess people in your favor at first sight, more time being necessary to discover greater talents.

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

Either a good or a bad reputation outruns and gets before people wherever they go.

People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Few men are of one plain, decided color; most are mixed, shaded, and blended; and vary as much, from different situations, as changeable silks do from different lights.

To please people is a great step towards persuading them.

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

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.

Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.

Whoever plays deep must necessarily lose his money or his character.

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

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

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

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

If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.

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

... 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 ......

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

Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.

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.

No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.

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.

Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.

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.

It is commonly said that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.

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.

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

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

As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.

Character must be kept bright as well as clean.

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 would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.

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.

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