Quotes from Lord Chesterfield

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

Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

Patience is a most necessary quality for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.

Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.

When one is learning, one should not think of play; and when one is at play, one should not think of learning.

Never hold any one by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge.

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

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character and one of the best instruments of success. Without it, genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.

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

Idleness is the holiday of fools.

Six, or at most seven, hours' sleep is, for a constancy, as much as you or anybody else can want; more is only laziness and dozing, and is, I am persuaded, both unwholesome and stupefying.

We are, in truth, more than a half of what we are by imitation.

There is time enough for everything in the course of the day if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year if you will do two things at a time.

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; whereas those who have a great deal of business must buckle to it; and then they always find time enough to do it.

Style is the dress of thoughts.

If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.

Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.

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

No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.

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.

The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.

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