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Most arts require long study and application, but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
Arts
Useful
Requires
Study
Desire
Helpfulness
Art
Pleasing
Long
Application
Require

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.
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Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.
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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.
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A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.
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Style is the dress of thoughts and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.
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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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To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.
Lord Chesterfield
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Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.
Lord Chesterfield
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A man who cannot command his temper, his attention, and his countenance should not think of being a man of business.
Lord Chesterfield
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Talk often, but never long in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers. Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company this being one of the few cases in which people do not care to be treated, every one being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.
Lord Chesterfield
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Dispatch is the soul of business.
Lord Chesterfield
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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
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Many people come into company full of what they intend to say in it themselves, without the least regard to others and thus charged up to the muzzle are resolved to let it off at any rate.
Lord Chesterfield
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Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.
Lord Chesterfield
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Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
Lord Chesterfield
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There is a sort of veteran women of condition, who, having lived always in the grand mode, and having possibly had some gallantries, together with the experience of five and twenty or thirty years, form a young fellow better than all the rules that can be given him.
Lord Chesterfield
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Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things for true Wit or good Sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore often seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.
Lord Chesterfield
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Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.
Lord Chesterfield
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I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers.
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You must labour to acquire that great and uncommon talent of hating with good breeding, and loving with prudence to make no quarrel irreconcilable by silly and unnecessary indications of anger and no friendship dangerous, in care it breaks, by a wanton, indiscreet, and unreserved confidence.
Lord Chesterfield