Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield - Manner Quotes

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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.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Patience, to hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications: with address enough to refuse, without offending; or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation: dexterity enough to conceal a truth, without telling a lie: sagacity enough to read other people's countenances: and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness, with a real reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but at the same time let them feel, the steadiness of your resentment.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The manner is often as important as the matter, sometimes more so.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and bodies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run downby much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good breeding, asit is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good breeding of the place which he is at.

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 company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than "your humble servant," at the bottom of a challengeis; they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield