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No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business and few people do business well, who do nothing else.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries and by saying Well, and so?--as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.
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I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views for lies are always detected, sooner or later.
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Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you.... Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth that is the least consideration but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.
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Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.
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Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.
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Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.
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Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
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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.
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The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.
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I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments.
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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.
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Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.
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If a man, notoriously and designedly, insults and affronts you, knock him down but if he only injures you, your best revenge is to be extremely civil to him in your outward behaviour, though at the same time you counterwork him, and return him the compliment, perhaps with interest.
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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
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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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Nothing sharpens the arrow of sarcasm so keenly as the courtesy that polishes it no reproach is like that we clothe with a smile and present with a bow.
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Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.
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Mind not only what people say, but how they say it and if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will and their looks frequently (reveal) what their words are calculated to conceal.
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There will never be a better time to start quitting smoking than today
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The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.
Lord Chesterfield