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Take rather than give the tone to the company you are in. If you have parts you will show them more or less upon every subject and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people's than of your own choosing.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by 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.
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For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.
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A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.
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Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.
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There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest: but there is seldom one in which a man should tell it all.
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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The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.
Lord Chesterfield
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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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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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Learning is acquired by reading books much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.
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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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At any age we must cherish illusions, consolatory or merely pleasant in youth, they are omnipresent in old age we must search for them, or even invent them. But with all that, boredom is their natural and inevitable accompaniment.
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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.
Lord Chesterfield
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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.
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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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
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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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Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.
Lord Chesterfield
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Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not.
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Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compassto direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.
Lord Chesterfield