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Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Reason
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Slight

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.
Lord Chesterfield
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Prepare yourself for the world, as athletes used to do for their exercises oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility strength alone will not do.
Lord Chesterfield
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Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.
Lord Chesterfield
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Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.
Lord Chesterfield
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Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires.
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Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self the second in a compelled recollection of others.
Lord Chesterfield
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Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
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Never write down your speeches beforehand if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater.
Lord Chesterfield
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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
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The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveler.
Lord Chesterfield
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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
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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If you love music hear it go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light brings him into a great deal of bad company and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.
Lord Chesterfield
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Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way for merit, that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties...
Lord Chesterfield
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Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
Lord Chesterfield
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A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.
Lord Chesterfield
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So much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day than a regular and consequential character.
Lord Chesterfield
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To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.
Lord Chesterfield
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Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.
Lord Chesterfield
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Dancing is, in itself, a very trifling and silly thing: but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform and then they should be able to do it well. And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well.
Lord Chesterfield