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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
Persons
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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Few people do business well, who do nothing else.
Lord Chesterfield
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Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.
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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Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.
Lord Chesterfield
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Not to perceive the little weaknesses and the idle but innocent affectations of the company may be allowable as a sort of polite duty. The company will be pleased with you if you do, and most probably will not be reformed by you if you do not.
Lord Chesterfield
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A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.
Lord Chesterfield
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Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.
Lord Chesterfield
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The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.
Lord Chesterfield
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Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.
Lord Chesterfield
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I really think next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing and the epithet which I should covet the most next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
Lord Chesterfield
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Our conjectures pass upon us for truths we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.
Lord Chesterfield
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A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.
Lord Chesterfield
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Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.
Lord Chesterfield
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Our self-love is mortified, when we think our opinions, and even our tastes, customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemnedas, on the contrary, it is tickled and flattered by approbation.
Lord Chesterfield
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Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices thatmay accompany it. Accept no present whatever let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.
Lord Chesterfield
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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