Top 300 Lord Chesterfield Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

302. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

303. “Instead of giving in to the greatest misfortune that can happen at my age, deafness, I busy myself in searching out all possible compensations, and I apply myself much more to all the amusements that are here within my grasp.”

— Lord Chesterfield

304. “Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.”

— Lord Chesterfield

305. “Smooth your way to the head, through the heart. The way of reason is a good one; but it is commonly something longer, and perhapsnot so sure.”

— Lord Chesterfield

306. “Second-rate knowledge, and middling talents, carry a man farther at courts, and in the busy part of the world, than superior knowledge and shining parts.”

— Lord Chesterfield

307. “Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

309. “He adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote upon, by the most splendid eloquence.”

— Lord Chesterfield

310. “Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read.”

— Lord Chesterfield

311. “Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act.”

— Lord Chesterfield

312. “It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.”

— Lord Chesterfield

313. “I am in the pitiable situation of feeling all the force of temptation without having the strength to succumb to it.”

— Lord Chesterfield

314. “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.”

— Lord Chesterfield

315. “It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you; I both own and justify it. It has been long said: Qui nescitdissimular nescit regnare: I go still farther, and say, that without some dissimulation, no business can be carried on at all.”

— Lord Chesterfield

316. “Gratitude is a burden upon our imperfect nature.”

— Lord Chesterfield

317. “Choose the company of your superiors whenever you can have it.”

— Lord Chesterfield

318. “Enjoy pleasures, but let them be your own, and then you will taste them.”

— Lord Chesterfield

319. “The greatest dangers have their allurements, if the want of success is likely to be attended with a degree of glory. Middling dangers are horrid, when the loss of reputation is the inevitable consequence of ill success.”

— Lord Chesterfield

320. “People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.”

— Lord Chesterfield

321. “Honest error is to be pitied not ridiculed.”

— Lord Chesterfield

322. “Gold and silver are but merchandise, as well as cloth or linen; and that nation that buys the least, and sells the most, must always have the most money.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

324. “I do not think that a Physician should be admitted into the College till he could bring proofs of his having cured, in his own person, at least four incurable distempers.”

— Lord Chesterfield

325. “Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.”

— Lord Chesterfield

326. “At any age we must cherish illusions, consolatory or merely pleasant; in youth, they are omnipresent; in old age we must search for them, or even invent them. But with all that, boredom is their natural and inevitable accompaniment.”

— Lord Chesterfield

327. “The heart never grows better with age; I fear rather worse, always harder.”

— Lord Chesterfield

328. “Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes.”

— Lord Chesterfield

329. “Whoever plays deep must necessarily lose his money or his character.”

— Lord Chesterfield

330. “I really think next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I should covet the most next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.”

— Lord Chesterfield

331. “So much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day than a regular and consequential character.”

— Lord Chesterfield

332. “Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield

334. “No woman ever yet either reasoned or acted long together consequentially; but some little thing, some love, some resentment, somepresent momentary interest, some supposed slight, or some humour, always breaks in upon, and oversets their most prudent resolutions and schemes.”

— Lord Chesterfield

335. “Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.”

— Lord Chesterfield

336. “Every man is to be had one way or another and every woman almost anyway.”

— Lord Chesterfield

337. “Ugliness is a letter of credit for some special purposes.”

— Lord Chesterfield

338. “In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.”

— Lord Chesterfield

339. “The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men’s company, can only be acquired in women’s.”

— Lord Chesterfield

340. “Keep carefully not of all scrapes and quarrels. They lower a character extremely; and are particularly dangerous in France, wherea man is dishonoured by not resenting an affront, and utterly ruined by resenting it.”

— Lord Chesterfield

341. “Lady – – is safely delivered of a son, to the great joy of that noble family. The expression, of a woman’s having brought her husband a son, seems to be a proper and cautious one; for it is never said, from whence.”

— Lord Chesterfield

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

— Lord Chesterfield