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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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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield
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
Men have various subjects in which they may excel, or at least would be thought to excel, and though they love to hear justice done to them where they know they excel, yet they are most and best flattered upon those points where they wish to excel and yet are doubtful whether they do or not.
Lord Chesterfield
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
Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
Lord Chesterfield
Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. 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
An honest man may really love a pretty girl, but only an idiot marries her merely because she is pretty.
Lord Chesterfield
Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.
Lord Chesterfield
If originally it was not good for a man to be alone, it is much worse for a sick man to be so he thinks too much of his distemper, and magnifies it.
Lord Chesterfield
Almost all men are born with every passion to some extent, but there is hardly a man who has not a dominant passion to which the others are subordinate. Discover this governing passion in every individual and when you have found the master passion of a man, remember never to trust to him where that passion is concerned.
Lord Chesterfield
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
Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not.
Lord Chesterfield
Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.
Lord Chesterfield
A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.
Lord Chesterfield
Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.
Lord Chesterfield
Most arts require long study and application, but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.
Lord Chesterfield
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
Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.
Lord Chesterfield
People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.
Lord Chesterfield
To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.
Lord Chesterfield
If you love music hear it go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light brings him into a great deal of bad company and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.
Lord Chesterfield
