Lord Chesterfield quotes:

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.

Regularity in the hours of rising and retiring, perseverance in exercise, adaptation of dress to the variations of climate, simple and nutritious aliment, and temperance in all things are necessary branches of the regimen of health.

Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me.

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.

Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.

Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.

Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.

The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.

Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is.

Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear.

Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.

Either a good or a bad reputation outruns and gets before people wherever they go.

I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true Wit or good Sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore often seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.

Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other, and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner.

I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.

Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.

Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.

The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrevocable.

Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.

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.

There never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel.

In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.

For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.

Keep your own secret, and get out other people's. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other people's. Counterwork your rivalswith diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.

We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.

If a marriage is going to work well, it must be on a solid footing, namely money, and of that commodity it is the girl with the smallest dowry who, to my knowledge, consumes the most, to infuriate her husband. All the same, it is only fair that the marriage should pay for past pleasures, since it will scarcely procure any in the future.

Six, or at most seven, hours' sleep is, for a constancy, as much as you or anybody else can want; more is only laziness and dozing, and is, I am persuaded, both unwholesome and stupefying.

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.

Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them.

As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.

Firmness of purpose is one of the best instruments of success.

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it, genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.

Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.

Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person.

Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.

Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but at the same time let them feel, the steadiness of your resentment.

Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison.

Whenever I go to an opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and my ears.

Most arts require long study and application; but the most useful of all, that of pleasing, only the desire.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

I am convinced that a light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man, who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and rainy morning, would have proved a coward.

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.

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.

Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.

There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way in the world, without them it is like a great rough diamond, very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but most prized when polished.

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.

You must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him down.

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.

It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

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.

The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary; but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveler.

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.

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.

Many people come into company full of what they intend to say in it themselves, without the least regard to others; and thus charged up to the muzzle are resolved to let it off at any rate.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men; their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.

Truth, but not the whole truth, must be the invariable principle of every man who hath either religion, honour, or prudence. Thosewho violate it, may be cunning, but they are not able. Lies and perfidy are the refuge of fools and cowards.

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.

I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries; and by saying Well, and so?--as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.

A man's fortune is frequently decided by his first address. If pleasing, others at once conclude he has merit; but if ungraceful, they decide against him.

A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the pox content which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution.

Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.

Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.

A man who owes a little can clear it off in a very little time, and, if he is a prudent man, will; whereas a man, who by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.

It is reported here that the King of Prussia has gone mad and has been locked up. There would be nothing bad about that: at leastthat might of his would no longer be a menace, and you could breathe freely for a while. I much prefer madmen who are locked up to those who are not.

All I can say, in answer to this kind queries [of friends] is that I have not the distemper called the Plague; but that I have allthe plagues of old age, and of a shattered carcase.

Real friendship is a slow grower.

Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.

Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.

Ridicule is the best test of truth.

It is commonly said that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.

Let dull critics feed upon the carcasses of plays give me the taste and the dressing

In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.

I have seen many people, who, while you are speaking to them, instead of looking at, and attending to you, fix their eyes upon theceiling, or some other part of the room, look out of the window, play with a dog, twirl their snuff-box, or pick their nose. Nothing discovers a little, futile, frivolous mind more than this, and nothing is so offensively ill-bred.

Remember, as long as you live, that nothing but strict truth can carry you through the world, with either your conscience or your honor unwounded.

Style is the dress of thoughts, and let them be ever so just.

... 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 ......

Take the tone of the company you are in.

A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.

True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.

When griefs are genuine, I find, there is nothing more vacuous, more burdensome, or even more impertinent, than letters of consolation.

Were you to converse with a king, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own valet-de chambre; but yet every look,word, and action should imply the utmost respect.... You must wait till you are spoken to; you must receive, not give, the subject of conversation, and you must even take care that the given subject of such conversation do not lead you into any impropriety.

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.

Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.

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.

A certain degree of fear produces the same effects as rashness.

A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.

A foreign minister, I will maintain it, can never be a good man of business if he is not an agreeable man of pleasure too. Half his business is done by the help of his pleasures: his views are carried on, and perhaps best, and most unsuspectedly, at balls, suppers, assemblies, and parties of pleasure; by intrigues with women, and connections insensibly formed with men, at those unguarded hours of amusement.

A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.

A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.

A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit.

A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life.

A learned parson, rusting in his cell at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well on the nature of man; will profoundly analyse the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, he knows nothing of man.... He views man as he does colours in Sir Isaac Newton's prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures.

A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.

A man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs, and vulgar aphorisms; uses neither favourite words nor hard words, but takes great care to speak very correctly and grammatically, and to pronounce properly; that is, according to the usage of the best companies.

A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.

A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.

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.

A man of the best parts and greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will be probably so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue.

A man who cannot command his temper should not think of being a man in business.

A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have nothing told him.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones.

A seeming ignorance is very often a most necessary part of worldly knowledge. It is, for instance, commonly advisable to seem ignorant of what people offer to tell you; and, when they say, Have you not heard of such a thing? to answer, No, and to let them go on, though you know it already.

A vulgar man is captious and jealous; eager and impetuous about trifles. He suspects himself to be slighted, and thinks everything that is said meant at him.

A wise man will live as much within his wit as his income.... Bear this truth always in your mind, that you may be admired for your wit, if you have any; but that nothing but good sense and good qualities can make you be loved.

A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be; and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not.

Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.