Quote

Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.

Lord Chesterfield

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Chesterfield
Refused
Justify
Justness
Turn
Mongers
Turns
Prettiness
Experience
Confirm
Thought
Maxim
Truth
Preferred
Everything
Maxims

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

Image
A man's fortune is frequently decided by his first address. If pleasing, others at once conclude he has merit but if ungraceful, they decide against him.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Most arts require long study and application, but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments. People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it merely to show that you have one.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Choose the company of your superiors whenever you can have it.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Compliments of congratulation are always kindly taken, and cost nothing but pen, ink and paper. I consider them as draughts upon good breeding, where the exchange is always greatly in favor of the drawer.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Instead of giving in to the greatest misfortune that can happen at my age, deafness, I busy myself in searching out all possible compensations, and I apply myself much more to all the amusements that are here within my grasp.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.
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
Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
There will never be a better time to start quitting smoking than today
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Health ... is the first and greatest of all blessings.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Remember that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be master of while you breathe.
Lord Chesterfield