Top 300 Lord Chesterfield Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Study the heart and the mind of man, and begin with your own. Meditation and reflection must lay the foundation of that knowledge, but experience and practice must, and alone can, complete it.”

— Lord Chesterfield

102. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

103. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

104. “Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.”

— Lord Chesterfield

105. “Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

107. “Take rather than give the tone to the company you are in. If you have parts you will show them more or less upon every subject; and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people’s than of your own choosing.”

— Lord Chesterfield

108. “An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.”

— Lord Chesterfield

109. “Little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge and are incapable of feeling te pleasure of forgiving their enemies.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

111. “Prepare yourself for the world, as athletes used to do for their exercises; oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

113. “Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon; they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compassto direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel; for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.”

— Lord Chesterfield

114. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

115. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

116. “In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak and speak with dignity too.”

— Lord Chesterfield

117. “Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.”

— Lord Chesterfield

118. “Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.”

— Lord Chesterfield

119. “Mankind is made up of inconsistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest sometimes wisely.”

— Lord Chesterfield

120. “The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.”

— Lord Chesterfield

121. “He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves.”

— Lord Chesterfield

122. “Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their age.”

— Lord Chesterfield

123. “Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.”

— Lord Chesterfield

124. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

125. “Few men are of one plain, decided color; most are mixed, shaded, and blended; and vary as much, from different situations, as changeable silks do from different lights.”

— Lord Chesterfield

126. “Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.”

— Lord Chesterfield

127. “Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.”

— Lord Chesterfield

128. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

129. “In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.”

— Lord Chesterfield

130. “We are hardly ever grateful for a fine clock or watch when it goes right, and we pay attention to it only when it falters, for then we are caught by surprise. It ought to be the other way about.”

— Lord Chesterfield

131. “Women are all so far Machiavellians that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation.”

— Lord Chesterfield

132. “If originally it was not good for a man to be alone, it is much worse for a sick man to be so; he thinks too much of his distemper, and magnifies it.”

— Lord Chesterfield

133. “The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.”

— Lord Chesterfield

134. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

135. “Fear manifested invites danger...”

— Lord Chesterfield

136. “If a man, notoriously and designedly, insults and affronts you, knock him down; but if he only injures you, your best revenge is to be extremely civil to him in your outward behaviour, though at the same time you counterwork him, and return him the compliment, perhaps with interest.”

— Lord Chesterfield

137. “You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe at once all the people in the room – their motions, their looks and their words – and yet without staring at them and seeming to be an observer.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

139. “Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life; some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something.”

— Lord Chesterfield

140. “One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

143. “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

144. “I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.”

— Lord Chesterfield

145. “To govern mankind, one must not overrate them.”

— Lord Chesterfield

146. “Nothing sharpens the arrow of sarcasm so keenly as the courtesy that polishes it; no reproach is like that we clothe with a smile and present with a bow.”

— Lord Chesterfield

147. “Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.”

— Lord Chesterfield

148. “I heartily wish you, in the plain home-spun style, a great number of happy new years, well employed in forming both your mind andyour manners, to be useful and agreeable to yourself, your country, and your friends.”

— Lord Chesterfield

149. “The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield