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Lord Chesterfield Quotes - Page 11

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In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own; for men in general are very much alike; and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same; and whatever

In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own; for men in general are very much alike; and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same; and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases or offends you, in others, will, mutatis mutandis, engage, disgust, please, or offend others, in you.

Lord Chesterfield
Passion, Men, Order
"Manners and speech or maxims extracted from Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son". Book by Lord Chesterfield, 1884.

Great merit, or great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked in the general run of the world.

Lord Chesterfield
Running, Attention, Done
Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.175, OUP Oxford

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Men, Doe, World

Wise people may say what they will, but one passion is never cured by another.

Lord Chesterfield
Wise, Wisdom, Passion

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.

Lord Chesterfield
People, Muzzle, Egotism

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

Lord Chesterfield
Secret, Littles, Great Ones
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.214

If you will please people, you must please them in their own way; and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.

Lord Chesterfield
People, Tolerance, Way
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.303

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

Lord Chesterfield
Men, Imperfection, Weakness
Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.93, Oxford University Press

Pray be always in motion. Early in the morning go and see things; and the rest of the day go and see people. If you stay but a week at a place, and that an insignificant one, see, however, all that is to be seen there; know as many people, and get into as many houses as ever you can.

Lord Chesterfield
Morning, People, House

Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness; for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.

Lord Chesterfield
Happiness, Guilt, Foundation
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.313

Ceremonies are the outworks of manners.

Lord Chesterfield
Manners, Ceremony

The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; "they will both fall into the ditch.

Lord Chesterfield
Fall, Blind, Young
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.165

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

Lord Chesterfield
Real, Dignity, Disadvantages
Lord Chesterfield (2008). “The Modern Chesterfield”, p.250, Wildside Press LLC

Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.

Lord Chesterfield
Ignorance, Understanding, Weak
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.629

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

Lord Chesterfield
White, Way, Merit
"Manners and speech or maxims extracted from Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son". Book by Lord Chesterfield, 1884.

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Wise, Men, Thinking
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.498

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
Mean, Vanity, Principles

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Character, Son, Two
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Eugenia Stanhope (1827). “Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son”, p.355

I assisted at the birth of that most significant word "flirtation," which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world.

Lord Chesterfield
Beautiful, World, Mouths
The World, no. 101, December 5, 1754.

Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid.

Lord Chesterfield
Dignity, Breeding, Ill
Lord Chesterfield (2008). “The Modern Chesterfield”, p.250, Wildside Press LLC

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Men, Law, Practice
Speech in the House of Lords, February 22, 1743.

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

Lord Chesterfield
Motivation, Temptation, Action
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.628

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Country, Law, Liberty

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Ignorance, Passion, Learning
"Manners and speech or maxims extracted from Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son". Book by Lord Chesterfield, 1884.

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.

Lord Chesterfield
New Year, Lying, Years

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