Quote

We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen.

Lord Chesterfield

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Chesterfield
Ancients
Madmen
Heroes
Prejudice
Hero
Deified
Really
Deify
Educations
Prejudiced

More quotes by Lord Chesterfield

Image
If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Ceremony is necessary in Courts, as the outwork and defense of manners.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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
Image
You must be respectable, if you will be respected.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.
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
If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
Compliments of congratulation are always kindly taken, and cost nothing but pen, ink and paper. I consider them as draughts upon good breeding, where the exchange is always greatly in favor of the drawer.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.
Lord Chesterfield
Image
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.
Lord Chesterfield