Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

It is an undoubted truth, that 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.

In short, let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the informations of others.

Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.

Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct—never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike.

People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.

There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest; but there is seldom one in which a man should tell all. Great skill is necessary to know how far to go, and where to stop.

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

It is a great advantage for any man to be able to talk or hear, neither ignorantly nor absurdly, upon any subject; for I have known people, who have not said one word, hear ignorantly and absurdly; it has appeared by their inattentive and …

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

Let dull critics feed upon the carcasses of plays; give me the taste and the dressing.

It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth.

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 …

The manner is often as important as the matter, sometimes more so.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

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

I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it to you.

Dispatch is the soul of business.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.

We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it.

Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.

Style is the dress of thoughts.

Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one’s own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people’s, preserve dignity.

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.

I recommend to you, in my last, an innocent piece of art: that of flattering people behind their backs, in presence of those who, to make their own court, much more than for your sake, will not fail to repeat, and even amplify, the praise …