Chesterfield Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Chesterfield
Chesterfield Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational Chesterfield quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.
Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
— Lord Chesterfield
Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.
— Lord Chesterfield
Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.
— Lord Chesterfield
The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; they will both fall into the ditch.
— Lord Chesterfield
Few fathers care much for their sons, or at least, most of them care more for their money. Of those who really love their sons, few know how to do it.
— Lord Chesterfield
Never write down your speeches beforehand; if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater.
— Lord Chesterfield
Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.
— Lord Chesterfield
In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak and speak with dignity too.
— Lord Chesterfield
We are, in truth, more than half what we are by imitation.
— Lord Chesterfield
Dispatch is the soul of business.
— Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl Of Chesterfield
In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.
— Lord Chesterfield
To please people is a great step towards persuading them.
— Lord Chesterfield
Real friendship is a slow grower.
— Lord Chesterfield
If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching.
— Lord Chesterfield
Lord Chesterfield designated ugly women as the third sex; how shall we place ugly men.
— Anna Cora Mowatt
The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.
— Lord Chesterfield
An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.
— Lord Chesterfield
Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.
— Lord Chesterfield
The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
— Lord Chesterfield
Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life; some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something.
— Lord Chesterfield
Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.
— Lord Chesterfield
Ceremonies are the outworks of manners.
— Lord Chesterfield
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.
— Lord Chesterfield
I assisted at the birth of that most significant word "flirtation," which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world.
— Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl Of Chesterfield
Most arts require long study and application; but the most useful of all, that of pleasing, only the desire.
— Lord Chesterfield
A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life.
— Lord Chesterfield
There will never be a better time to start quitting smoking than today
— Lord Chesterfield
A certain degree of fear produces the same effects as rashness.
— Lord Chesterfield
It is often more necessary to conceal contempt than resentment; the former is never forgiven, but the later is sometimes forgotten.
— Lord Chesterfield
Not to care for philosophy is to be a true philospher.
— Lord Chesterfield
The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrevocable.
— Lord Chesterfield
To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.
— Lord Chesterfield
Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but at the same time let them feel, the steadiness of your resentment.
— Lord Chesterfield
Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.
— Lord Chesterfield
Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes.
— Lord Chesterfield
People hate who makes you feel one's inferiority.
— Lord Chesterfield
Take the tone of the company you are in.
— Lord Chesterfield
Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defense of manners.
— Lord Chesterfield
Women have, in general, but ne object, which is their beauty; upon which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to swallow.
— Lord Chesterfield
Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.
— Lord Chesterfield
The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic.
— Lord Chesterfield
The most ignorant are the boldest conjecturers.
— Lord Chesterfield
I am in the pitiable situation of feeling all the force of temptation without having the strength to succumb to it.
— Lord Chesterfield
Little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge and are incapable of feeling te pleasure of forgiving their enemies.
— Lord Chesterfield
A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.
— Lord Chesterfield
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.
— Lord Chesterfield
Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.
— Lord Chesterfield
Health ... is the first and greatest of all blessings.
— Lord Chesterfield
In those days he was wiser than he is now - he used frequently to take my advice.
— Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl Of Chesterfield
Women, then, are only children of a larger growth
— Lord Chesterfield
He adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote upon, by the most splendid eloquence.
— Lord Chesterfield
Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is.
— Lord Chesterfield
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.
— Lord Chesterfield
Unlike my subject will I frame my song, It shall be witty and it shan't be long.
— Lord Chesterfield
Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.
— Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl Of Chesterfield
Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.
— Lord Chesterfield
Give Dayrolles a chair.
— Lord Chesterfield
Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.
— Lord Chesterfield
The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.
— Lord Chesterfield
Whoever incites anger has a strong insurance against indifference.
— Lord Chesterfield
Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
— Lord Chesterfield
Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.
— Lord Chesterfield
Remember that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be master of while you breathe.
— Lord Chesterfield
Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch their judgments, such as they are.
— Lord Chesterfield
The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.
— Lord Chesterfield
Men in the uniform of Wall Street retirement: black Chesterfield coat, rimless glasses and the Times folded to the obituary page..
— Jimmy Breslin
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
— Lord Chesterfield
A lifelong disciple of Lord Chesterfield's maxim that a gentleman was free to do anything he pleased as long as he did it with style.
— Joseph J. Ellis
The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.
— Lord Chesterfield
May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer, or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after!
— Lord Chesterfield
A man who cannot command his temper should not think of being a man in business.
— Lord Chesterfield
Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
— Lord Chesterfield
A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
— Lord Chesterfield
Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.
— Lord Chesterfield
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.
— Lord Chesterfield
A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.
— Lord Chesterfield
The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.
— Lord Chesterfield
As Lord Chesterfield said of the generals of his day, 'I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.'
— Duke Of Wellington
When a person is in fashion, all they do is right.
— Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl Of Chesterfield
There are some occasions when a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest.
— Lord Chesterfield
Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.
— Lord Chesterfield
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.
— Lord Chesterfield
A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
— Lord Chesterfield
The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.
— Lord Chesterfield
To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.
— Lord Chesterfield
Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement; I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not.
— Lord Chesterfield
People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.
— Lord Chesterfield
No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.
— Lord Chesterfield
Pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and never pull it out in company unless desired.
— Lord Chesterfield
Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.
— Lord Chesterfield
Silence and reserve suggest latent power. What some men think has more effect than what others say.
— Lord Chesterfield
Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.
— Lord Chesterfield
Sexual intercourse is a grossly overrated pastime; the position is undignified, the pleasure momentary and the consequences damnable.
— Lord Chesterfield
Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way to merit that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties.
— Lord Chesterfield
A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.
— Lord Chesterfield
Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.
— Lord Chesterfield
Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.
— Lord Chesterfield
Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.
— Lord Chesterfield
Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.
— Lord Chesterfield