Quote

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.

Lord Chesterfield

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Chesterfield
Ill
Manners
Security
Inspirational
Best
Good
Courteous
Men
Breeding
People
Courtesy

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

Image
Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.
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
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
Sexual intercourse is a grossly overrated pastime the position is undignified, the pleasure momentary and the consequences damnable.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe at once all the people in the room--their motions, their looks and their words--and yet without staring at them and seeming to be an observer.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?
Lord Chesterfield
Image
A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Ridicule is the best test of truth.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.
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
In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Many people come into company full of what they intend to say in it themselves, without the least regard to others and thus charged up to the muzzle are resolved to let it off at any rate.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own for men in general are very much alike and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases or offends you, in others, will, mutatis mutandis, engage, disgust, please, or offend others, in you.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
I would have all intoleration intolerated in its turn.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.
Lord Chesterfield