Top 15 Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

[On sex] The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, the expense damnable.

You foolish man, you do not understand your own foolish business.

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 short, let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the informations of others.

Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.

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.

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

The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling.

There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest; but there is seldom one in which a man should tell all. Great skill is necessary to know how far to go, and where to stop.

A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones.

It is a great advantage for any man to be able to talk or hear, neither ignorantly nor absurdly, upon any subject; for I have known people, who have not said one word, hear ignorantly and absurdly; it has appeared by their inattentive and unmeaning faces.

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

Let dull critics feed upon the carcasses of plays; give me the taste and the dressing.

It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth.

You had better refuse a favor gracefully, than to grant it clumsily. Manner is all, in everything: it is by manner only that you can please, and consequently rise. All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your manner, your air, if good, very probably may.