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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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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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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.
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The more one works, the more willing one is to work.
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To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.
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I would have all intoleration intolerated in its turn.
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Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.
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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
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Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
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.
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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.
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Keep your own secret, and get out other people's. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other people's. Counterwork your rivalswith diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.
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Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry judge them all by their merits, but not by their age
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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.
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The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon his dress and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time he knows he must not neglect it.
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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
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If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
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The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom.
Lord Chesterfield
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Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
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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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It is hard to say which is the greatest fool: he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.
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This is the day when people reciprocally offer, and receive, the kindest and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meaning them on one side, or believing them on the other. They are formed by the head, in compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of nature.
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