Best 389 quotes of Lord Chesterfield on MyQuotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.

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

A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life.

A learned parson, rusting in his cell at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what ; and yet, unfortunately, he knows nothing of man... He views man as he does colours in Sir Isaac Newton's prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures.

All ceremonies are in themselves very silly things; but yet, a man of the world should know them. They are the outworks of Mannersand Decency, which would be too often broken in upon, if it were not for that defence, which keeps the enemy at a proper distance.

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.

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.

Almost all men are born with every passion to some extent, but there is hardly a man who has not a dominant passion to which the others are subordinate. Discover this governing passion in every individual; and when you have found the master passion of a man, remember never to trust to him where that passion is concerned.

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

A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.

A man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs, and vulgar aphorisms; uses neither favourite words nor hard words, but takes great care to speak very correctly and grammatically, and to pronounce properly; that is, according to the usage of the best companies.

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

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.

A man of sense soon discovers, because he carefully observes, where and how long he is welcome; and takes care to leave the company at least as soon as he is wished out of it. Fools never perceive whether they are ill timed or ill placed.

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.

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.

A man who cannot command his temper, his attention, and his countenance should not think of being a man of business.

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.

An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions. He is neither hot nor timid.

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

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

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

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

Anne of Austria (with great submission to a Crowned Head do I say it) was a B----. She had spirit and courage without parts, devotion without common morality, and lewdness without tenderness either to justify or to dignify it. Her two sons were no more Lewis the Thirteen's than they were mine.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A seeming ignorance is very often a most necessary part of worldly knowledge. It is, for instance, commonly advisable to seem ignorant of what people offer to tell you; and when they say, Have not you heard of such a thing? to answer No, and to let them go on, though you know it already.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

A wise man will live as much within his wit as his income.... Bear this truth always in your mind, that you may be admired for your wit, if you have any; but that nothing but good sense and good qualities can make you be loved.

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

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

A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be; and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not.

Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me.

Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.