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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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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.
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Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.
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Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life returns are equally expected for both.
Lord Chesterfield
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The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom.
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If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.
Lord Chesterfield
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It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.
Lord Chesterfield
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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
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If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
Lord Chesterfield
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Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it it will counsel you best.
Lord Chesterfield
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For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.
Lord Chesterfield
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No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.
Lord Chesterfield
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In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.
Lord Chesterfield
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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
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
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I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
Lord Chesterfield
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Deserve a great deal, and you shall have a great deal deserve little, and you shall have but a little and be good for nothing atall, and I assure you, you shall have nothing at all.
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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Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
Lord Chesterfield
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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
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Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
Lord Chesterfield