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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.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.
Lord Chesterfield
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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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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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If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
Lord Chesterfield
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Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
Lord Chesterfield
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Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
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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Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than your humble servant, at the bottom of a challengeis they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.
Lord Chesterfield
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The permanency of most friendships depends upon the continuity of good fortune.
Lord Chesterfield
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Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.
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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To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.
Lord Chesterfield
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How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?
Lord Chesterfield
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I wish... that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it.
Lord Chesterfield
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Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.
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.
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