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A certain degree of ceremony is a necessary outwork of manners, as well as of religion it keeps the forward and petulant at a proper distance, and is a very small restraint to the sensible and to the well-bred part of the world.

Lord Chesterfield

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Lord Chesterfield
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More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

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If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
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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.
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Few people do business well, who do nothing else.
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To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.
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Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.
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The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.
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I can hardly bring myself to caution you against drinking, because I am persuaded that I am writing to a rational creature, a gentleman, and not to a swine. However, that you may not be insensibly drawn into that beastly custom of even sober drinking and sipping, as the sots call it, I advise you to be of no club whatsoever.
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The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think their notions are almost all adoptive and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.
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We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen.
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Instead of giving in to the greatest misfortune that can happen at my age, deafness, I busy myself in searching out all possible compensations, and I apply myself much more to all the amusements that are here within my grasp.
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Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.
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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.
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In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.
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Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
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The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.
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People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.
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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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If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching.
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The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.
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Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.
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