Quotes By Lord Chesterfield

Take the tone of the company you are in.

Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act.

There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.

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

Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.

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

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.

The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon his dress; and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time he knows he must not neglect it.

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.

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.

He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves.

Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear.

Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.

Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Regularity in the hours of rising and retiring, perseverance in exercise, adaptation of dress to the variations of climate, simple and nutritious aliment, and temperance in all things are necessary branches of the regimen of health.

If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.

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

Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.

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.

Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.

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

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

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

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

Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed.

Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one.