Quote

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

Lord Chesterfield

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Chesterfield
May
Poet
Ever
Please
Great
Sure
Make
Attention
Men
Understanding
Common
Pleases
Culture
Labor
Care
Except

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

Image
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
Image
Never write down your speeches beforehand if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you canbut never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
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.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it merely to show that you have one.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
We are hardly ever grateful for a fine clock or watch when it goes right, and we pay attention to it only when it falters, for then we are caught by surprise. It ought to be the other way about.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
No woman ever yet either reasoned or acted long together consequentially but some little thing, some love, some resentment, somepresent momentary interest, some supposed slight, or some humour, always breaks in upon, and oversets their most prudent resolutions and schemes.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
I can hardly bring myself to caution you against drinking, because I am persuaded that I am writing to a rational creature, a gentleman, and not to a swine. However, that you may not be insensibly drawn into that beastly custom of even sober drinking and sipping, as the sots call it, I advise you to be of no club whatsoever.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
You must labour to acquire that great and uncommon talent of hating with good breeding, and loving with prudence to make no quarrel irreconcilable by silly and unnecessary indications of anger and no friendship dangerous, in care it breaks, by a wanton, indiscreet, and unreserved confidence.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you I both own and justify it. It has been long said: Qui nescitdissimular nescit regnare: I go still farther, and say, that without some dissimulation, no business can be carried on at all.
Lord Chesterfield