Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Chesterfield
Liberty
Monarchy
Great
Knew
Admired
Law
Equally
Known
Britain
Happy
Tyranny
Montesquieu
Fixed
Licentiousness
Wells
Laws
Restrain
Well
Constitution
Justly
Country

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

Image
Choose the company of your superiors whenever you can have it.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
There are people who indulge themselves in a sort of lying, which they reckon innocent, and which in one sense is so for it hurtsnobody but themselves. This sort of lying is the spurious offspring of vanity, begotten upon folly.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
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
Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
We are hardly ever grateful for a fine clock or watch when it goes right, and we pay attention to it only when it falters, for then we are caught by surprise. It ought to be the other way about.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
It is to be presumed, that a man of common sense, who does not desire to please, desires nothing at all since he must know that he cannot obtain anything without it.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Sincerity is the most compendious wisdom.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.
Lord Chesterfield