Famous Quotes

Quotes by Lord Chesterfield

• A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
• Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.
• Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison.
• I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.
• 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.
• 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.
• In seeking wisdom thou art wise in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool.
• 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.
• Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
• Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
• 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.
• Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
• Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked.
• Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it merely to show that you have one.
• Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.
• 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.
• 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.
• Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
• 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.
• The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.
• 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.
• To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.
• Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one.
• 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.