Quote

Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.

Lord Chesterfield

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Chesterfield
Great
Endure
Good
Unless
Men
Share
Love
Everybody
Admires
People
Quality
Wit
Fear
Aim
Another
Admire
Must
Shining

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

Image
Dispatch is the soul of business.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
One should always think of what one is about when one is learning, one should not think of play and when one is at play, one should not think of learning.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
At any age we must cherish illusions, consolatory or merely pleasant in youth, they are omnipresent in old age we must search for them, or even invent them. But with all that, boredom is their natural and inevitable accompaniment.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Sincerity is the most compendious wisdom.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Be wiser than other people if you can but do not tell them so.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
If a man, notoriously and designedly, insults and affronts you, knock him down but if he only injures you, your best revenge is to be extremely civil to him in your outward behaviour, though at the same time you counterwork him, and return him the compliment, perhaps with interest.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Learning is acquired by reading books much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Real friendship is a slow grower.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therefore one seldom does it at all.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think their notions are almost all adoptive and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
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