Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.

Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct—never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike.

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

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.

I foresee, that before the end of this century, the trade of both King and Priest will not be half so good a one as it has been.

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.

It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therefore one seldom does it at all.

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

Marriage is the cure of love, and friendship the cure of marriage.

Courts and camps are the only places to learn the world in.

The manner is often as important as the matter, sometimes more so.

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.

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

Every woman is infallibly to be gained by every sort of flattery, and every man by one sort or other.

I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh.