Quotes from Lord Chesterfield

Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid.

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

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder.

Fear invites danger; concealed cowards insult known ones.

Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner.

Wrongs are often forgiven; but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.

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

The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.

Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any viable reason.

Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me.

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.

The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease; the manner of a gentleman, ease without freedom

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

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

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

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

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

Women, then, are only children of a larger growth

Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.

Women, and young men, are very apt to tell what secrets they know, from the vanity of having been trusted.

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.