Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

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Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
We are in truth, more than half what we are by imitation. The great point is to choose good models and to study them with care.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Most arts require long study and application; but the most useful of all, that of pleasing, only the desire.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
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.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine where others are fine, and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
As kings are begotten and born like other men, it is to be presumed that they are of the human species; and perhaps, had they thesame education, they might prove like other men. But, flattered from their cradles, their hearts are corrupted, and their heads are turned, so that they seem to be a species by themselves.... Flattery cannot be too strong for them; drunk with it from their infancy, like old drinkers, they require dreams.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness; for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
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.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
In your friendships and in your enmities let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds; make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Remember that the wit, humour, and jokes of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear transplanting.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp itsseat, and rule in its stead.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The greatest powers cannot injure a man's character whose reputation is unblemished among his party.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you can;but never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak and speak with dignity too.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life; returns are equally expected for both.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Few fathers care much for their sons, or at least, most of them care more for their money. Of those who really love their sons, few know how to do it.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says vry justly, 'Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.'

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Great merit or great failings will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked, in the general run of the world. Examine yourself, why you like such and such people and dislike such and such others; and you will find that those different sentiments proceed from very slight causes.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
If a man, notoriously and designedly, insults and affronts you, knock him down; but if he only injures you, your best revenge is to be extremely civil to him in your outward behaviour, though at the same time you counterwork him, and return him the compliment, perhaps with interest.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
You must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him down.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
All ceremonies are in themselves very silly things; but yet, a man of the world should know them. They are the outworks of Mannersand Decency, which would be too often broken in upon, if it were not for that defence, which keeps the enemy at a proper distance.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries; and by saying Well, and so?--as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield