Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Chesterfield
Talking
Case
Hearers
Often
Pay
Reckoning
Care
Please
Tire
Whole
Cases
Treat
Every
Least
Treats
Long
Company
Treated
Never
Sure
Fully
People
Talk
Convinced
Wherewithal

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

Image
A man of sense soon discovers, because he carefully observes, where and how long he is welcome and takes care to leave the company at least as soon as he is wished out of it. Fools never perceive whether they are ill timed or ill placed.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Be wiser than other people if you can but do not tell them so.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Remember that the wit, humour, and jokes of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear transplanting.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Sincerity is the most compendious wisdom.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry judge them all by their merits, but not by their age
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
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
Image
One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.
Lord Chesterfield