Authors:

Lord Chesterfield Quotes - Page 17

All Quotes Age Ambition Art Business Character Charity Children Civility Common Sense Country Desire Dignity Drinking Education Experience Family Fashion Fear Flattery Forgiveness Friends Friendship Funny Genius Giving Gold Grace Gratitude Growth Happiness Hate Health Heart House Human Nature Ignorance Imagination Imperfection Inspirational Joy Judging Judgment Justice Knowledge Language Laughter Laziness Learning Life Loss Love Lying Mankind Manners Marriage Modesty New Year Pain Passion Patience Persuasion Philosophy Pleasure Politics Positive Praise Prejudice Pride Purpose Reading Reflection Reputation Resentment Ridicule Running Son Soul Style Success Talent Temptation Time Today Trust Truth Understanding Weakness Wife Wine Wisdom Wit Work Writing Youth
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

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Party, Men, Views

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

Lord Chesterfield
Funny, Giving, Advice

Take the tone of the company you are in...

Lord Chesterfield
Advice, Tone, Conformity
"Manners and speech or maxims extracted from Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son". Book by Lord Chesterfield, 1884.

Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.

Lord Chesterfield
Time, Flying, Hours

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Distance, Degrees, World

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.

Lord Chesterfield
Friendship, Best Friend, Funny Friend

Those whom you can make like themselves better will, I promise you, like you very well.

Lord Chesterfield
Promise, I Promise, Like You
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.353

It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain; and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.

Lord Chesterfield
Grace, Doubt, British
'Letters to his Son' (1774) 18 November 1748

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

Lord Chesterfield
Advice, Return, Comeback

I heartily wish you, in the plain home-spun style, a great number of happy new years, well employed in forming both your mind andyour manners, to be useful and agreeable to yourself, your country, and your friends.

Lord Chesterfield
Country, New Year, Home

Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.

Lord Chesterfield
Vices, Degrees, May
Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.381, Oxford Paperbacks

I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.

Lord Chesterfield
Fire, Poetry, Forgiving
Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.316, OUP Oxford

In your friendships and in your enmities let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds; make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business.

Lord Chesterfield
Friendship, Enmity, Strange
Lord Chesterfield (2008). “The Modern Chesterfield”, p.246, Wildside Press LLC

If originally it was not good for a man to be alone, it is much worse for a sick man to be so; he thinks too much of his distemper, and magnifies it.

Lord Chesterfield
Men, Thinking, Sick
Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.364, Oxford Paperbacks

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Health, Age, Answers

It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is anoptimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness--physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.

Lord Chesterfield
Real, Philosophical, Doctors

The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.

Lord Chesterfield
Friendship, Degrees, Connections
Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.174, Oxford University Press

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

Lord Chesterfield
Wit, Related, Buffoons
Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.141, Oxford University Press

There is a sort of veteran women of condition, who, having lived always in the grand mode, and having possibly had some gallantries, together with the experience of five and twenty or thirty years, form a young fellow better than all the rules that can be given him.

Lord Chesterfield
Women, Years, Together

Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops; for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. 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
Mean, Giving, Matter

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

Lord Chesterfield
Would Be, Done, Method
Letters to His Son, 16 Oct. 1747

The most ignorant are the boldest conjecturers.

Lord Chesterfield
Ignorance, Ignorant

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Lying, Vanity, People
Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.196, Oxford University Press

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.

Lord Chesterfield
Writing, Order, Despair

Instead of giving in to the greatest misfortune that can happen at my age, deafness, I busy myself in searching out all possible compensations, and I apply myself much more to all the amusements that are here within my grasp.

Lord Chesterfield
Giving, Age, Amusement

You May Also Like: