Lord Chesterfield quote: "Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you."

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

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, abs...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimatel...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story tha...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Prepare yourself for the world, as the athletes used to do for their exercise; oil your mind and you...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defense of manners.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Wear your learning like a watch and do not pull it out merely to show you have it. If you are asked ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

One should always think of what one is about: when one is learning, one should not think of play: an...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watc...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true Wit or good ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldo...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody's torm...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do busine...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Never hold anyone by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instrument...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Character must be kept bright as well as clean.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

You must look into people, as well as at them.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Be your character what it will, it will be known; and nobody will take it upon your word.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

There is a sort of veteran woman of condition, who, having lived always in the grand monde, and havi...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Great merit, or great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions,...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, an...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

History is but a confused heap of facts.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon his dress; and t...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

When a person is in fashion, all they do is right.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Little, vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the pleasure of fo...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. It implies a disco...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the wo...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and v...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

It is commonly said that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom m...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's s...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but at the same time let them feel, t...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, t...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

A constant smirk upon the face, and a whiffing activity of the body, are strong indications of futil...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

I am convinced that a light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

Whoever is admitted or sought for, in company, upon any other account than that of his merit and man...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Politeness is as much concerned in answering letters within a reasonable time, as it is in returning...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetit...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no delay, no ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary; but surely ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The scholar without good breeding is a nitpicker; the philosopher a cynic; the soldier a brute and e...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake o...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always th...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the t...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Take the tone of the company you are in.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the de...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sobe...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness; no laziness...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to Dispatch than Method.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Wrongs are often forgiven; contempt never
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Ridicule is the best test of truth
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Take care in your minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be plea...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. - Letter to his son, October 9, 1746.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Know the true value of time: snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Idleness is the only refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and kee...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

[Common sense] is the best sense I know of.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their friends.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good fo...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness; no laziness; ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, an...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of thin...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in advanced age, and if we do no...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

If you will please people, you must please them in your own way.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever sed...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The more one works, the more willing one is to work.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

An injury is much sooner forgiven than an insult
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

Whenever I go to an opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half guinea, and deliver ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, mak...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

If you are not in fashion, you are nobody. - "Letter to his son", April 30, 1750.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

History is a confused heap of facts.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Wear your learning, like a watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Look in the face of the person to whom you are speaking if you wish to know his real sentiments, for...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years; but we don't choose to have it known.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

In those days he was wiser than he is now - he used frequently to take my advice.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Do as you would be done by is the surest method of pleasing
LORD CHESTERFIELD

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other, and ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out and strike it merely...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Style is the dress of thoughts
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Words are the dress of thoughts; which should no more be presented in rags, tatters, and dirt than y...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

You must look into people, as well as at them
LORD CHESTERFIELD

No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degr...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Promptness is the soul of business
LORD CHESTERFIELD

The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man, who cannot believe in anything else, are both in...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible re...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

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

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person
LORD CHESTERFIELD

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Regularity in the hours of rising and retiring, perseverance in exercise, adaptation of dress to the...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness its poison
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Prepare yourself for the world, as the athletes used to do for their exercise; oil your mind and you...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Learning is acquired by reading books; but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the wo...
LORD CHESTERFIELD

What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, is much more common where the climate's sultry.
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Few people do business well who do nothing else
LORD CHESTERFIELD

When a man wants your advice he generally wants your praise
LORD CHESTERFIELD

Little, vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the pleasure of f...
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who ...
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

Little, vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the pleasure of ...
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

Due attention to the inside of books, and due contempt for the outside, is the proper relation betwe...
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

Take the tone of the company you are in.
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always want it the least.
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

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

A chapter of accidents.
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

Sacrifice to the Graces.
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

Courts and camps are the only places to learn the world in.
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in a mixed company.
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge.
LORD BYRON

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.
LORD BYRON

One of the nuisances of the ballot is that when the oracle has spoken you never know what it means.
LORD SALISBURY

I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inh...
LORD BYRON

In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.
LORD KELVIN

What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom...
LORD BYRON

There were exceptions, a couple of families that just plain didn't want to even think about it, ...
WALTER LORD

You have to study the people and the ones that measure up are not always the ones you expect.
WALTER LORD

I never earned a dollar that was not somehow through writing.
WALTER LORD

It's a funny thing, but today the Titanic is probably much more - that is people are much more a...
WALTER LORD

Someone once told me the one thread that runs through them all is a premium on personal courage - no...
WALTER LORD

Events alone rarely provide much guide to the future.
WALTER LORD

I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situa...
WALTER LORD

Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.
WALTER LORD

What you have, what you are - your looks, your personality, your way of thinking - is unique. No one...
JACK LORD

The introduction of religious passion into politics is the end of honest politics, and the introduct...
LORD HAILSHAM

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.
LORD BYRON

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
LORD BYRON

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the ...
LORD BYRON

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
LORD ACTON

There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? ...
LORD BYRON

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave not...
LORD BYRON

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which...
LORD BYRON

Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction.
LORD BYRON

Adversity is the first path to truth.
LORD BYRON

Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you.

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Lord Chesterfield

Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you.

Lord Chesterfield

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