Top 300 Lord Chesterfield Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Lord Chesterfield

Featured in: Time Management Quotes

2. “Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

4. “If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.”

— Lord Chesterfield

5. “Sexual intercourse is a grossly overrated pastime; the position is undignified, the pleasure momentary and the consequences damnable.”

— Lord Chesterfield

6. “There will never be a better time to start quitting smoking than today.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

8. “Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different.”

— Lord Chesterfield

9. “Words are the dress of thoughts; which should no more be presented in rags, tatters, and dirt than your person should.”

— Lord Chesterfield

10. “To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.”

— Lord Chesterfield

11. “Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.”

— Lord Chesterfield

12. “We are in truth, more than half what we are by imitation. The great point is to choose good models and to study them with care.”

— Lord Chesterfield

13. “The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

15. “A man’s own good breeding is the best security against other people’s ill manners.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

17. “You must look into people, as well as at them.”

— Lord Chesterfield

18. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

19. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

20. “The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.”

— Lord Chesterfield

21. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

22. “Character must be kept bright as well as clean.”

— Lord Chesterfield

23. “Elegance of manner is the outgrowth of refined and exalted sense.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

26. “Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

28. “Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.”

— Lord Chesterfield

29. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

Featured in: Reading Quotes

30. “I recommend to you to take care of the minutes; for hours will take care of themselves. I am very sure, that many people lose two or three hours every day, by not taking care of the minutes.”

— Lord Chesterfield

31. “We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.”

— Lord Chesterfield

32. “Women especially as to be talked to as below men, and above children.”

— Lord Chesterfield

33. “The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.”

— Lord Chesterfield

34. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

35. “The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge.”

— Lord Chesterfield

36. “In the ordinary course of things, how many succeed in society merely by virtue of their manners, while others, however meritorious, fail through lack of them? After all, it’s only barbarians who wear uncut precious stones.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

38. “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day if you do but one thing once; but there is not time enough in the year if you will do two things at a time.”

— Lord Chesterfield

39. “Sincerity is the most compendious wisdom.”

— Lord Chesterfield

40. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

41. “Silence and reserve suggest latent power. What some men think has more effect than what others say.”

— Lord Chesterfield

42. “Firmness of purpose is one of the best instruments of success.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

44. “Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

46. “Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.”

— Lord Chesterfield

47. “Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

49. “Never hold anyone by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.”

— Lord Chesterfield

50. “The mere brute pleasure of reading – the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.”

— Lord Chesterfield

Featured in: Reading Quotes