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Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. 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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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon his dress and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time he knows he must not neglect it.
Lord Chesterfield
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To me it appears strange that the men against whom I should be enabled to bring an action for laying a little dirt at my door, may with impunity drive by it half-a-dozen calves, with their tails lopped close to their bodies and their hinder parts covered with blood.
Lord Chesterfield
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There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.
Lord Chesterfield
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Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
Lord Chesterfield
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When one is at play, one should not think of one's learning.
Lord Chesterfield
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A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
Lord Chesterfield
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Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices thatmay accompany it. Accept no present whatever let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.
Lord Chesterfield
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Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and ineffective.
Lord Chesterfield
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It is hard to say which is the greatest fool: he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.
Lord Chesterfield
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Real friendship is a slow grower.
Lord Chesterfield
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Our self-love is mortified, when we think our opinions, and even our tastes, customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemnedas, on the contrary, it is tickled and flattered by approbation.
Lord Chesterfield
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The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
Lord Chesterfield
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Style is the dress of thoughts, and let them be ever so just.
Lord Chesterfield
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Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.
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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Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you canbut never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.
Lord Chesterfield
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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
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Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.
Lord Chesterfield
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I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
Lord Chesterfield
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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