Lord Chesterfield
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.Collection: Education
Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.Collection: Advice
If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.Collection: Inspirational
Cultivate the habit of thinking ahead, and of anticipating the necessary and immediate consequences of all your actions.... Likewise in your pleasures, ask yourself what such and such an amusement leads to, as it is essential to have an objective in everything you do. Any pastime that contributes nothing to bodily strength or to mental alertness is a totally ridiculous, not to say, idiotic, pleasure.Collection: Motivation
Firmness of purpose is one of the best instruments of success.Collection: Success
Wrongs are often forgiven; but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.Collection: Forgiveness
Without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have discovered that nature was the same three thousand years ago as at present; that men were but men then as well as now; that modes and customs vary often, but that human nature is always the same. And I can no more suppose, that men were better, braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred or three thousand years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or vegetables were better than they are now.Collection: Animal
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.Collection: Inspirational
You must look into people, as well as at them.Collection: Relationship
The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.Collection: Focus
Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.Collection: Friendship
The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.Collection: Gossip
People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.Collection: Hate
Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners.Collection: Beauty
An honest man may really love a pretty girl, but only an idiot marries her merely because she is pretty.Collection: Love
Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in mixed company; it should only be treated among a very few people of learning, for mutual instruction. It is too awful and respectable a subject to become a familiar one.Collection: Mean
Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.Collection: Mind
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.Collection: Revenge
Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.Collection: Ignorance
Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latterdeserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.Collection: Strong
Women are all so far Machiavellians that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation.Collection: Strong
A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.Collection: Men
Nothing sharpens the arrow of sarcasm so keenly as the courtesy that polishes it; no reproach is like that we clothe with a smile and present with a bow.Collection: Sarcasm
Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it; it will counsel you best.Collection: Common Sense
Few people do business well, who do nothing else.Collection: Business
In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.Collection: Dark
Vulgarism in language is the distinguishing characteristic of bad company, and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that. Proverbial expressions, and trite sayings, are the flowers of the rhetoric of vulgar man.Collection: Fashion
May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer, or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after!Collection: Health
A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.Collection: Inspirational
A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.Collection: Men
Talk often, but never long; in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers. Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company; this being one of the few cases in which people do not care to be treated, every one being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.Collection: Talking
A man's fortune is frequently decided by his first address. If pleasing, others at once conclude he has merit; but if ungraceful, they decide against him.Collection: Men
Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.Collection: Inspirational
The greatest dangers have their allurements, if the want of success is likely to be attended with a degree of glory. Middling dangers are horrid, when the loss of reputation is the inevitable consequence of ill success.Collection: Success
Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.Collection: Would Be
Men are apt to mistake, or at least to seem to mistake, their own talents, in hopes, perhaps, of misleading others to allow them that which they are conscious they do not possess. Thus lord Hardwicke valued himself more upon being a great minister of state, which he certainly was not, than upon being a great magistrate, which he certainly was.Collection: Mistake
The rulers of the earth are all worth knowing; they suggest moral reflections: and the respect that one naturally has for God's vice-regents here on earth is greatly increased by acquaintance with them.Collection: Leadership
Were you to converse with a king, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own valet-de chambre; but yet every look,word, and action should imply the utmost respect.... You must wait till you are spoken to; you must receive, not give, the subject of conversation, and you must even take care that the given subject of such conversation do not lead you into any impropriety.Collection: Kings
Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known.Collection: Retirement
There is nothing so necessary, but at the same time there is nothing more difficult (I know it by experience) for you young fellows, than to know how to behave yourselves prudently towards those whom you do not like. Your passions are warm, and your heads are light; you hate all those who oppose your views, either of ambition or love; and a rival, in either, is almost a synonymous term for any enemy.Collection: Hate
It is to be presumed, that a man of common sense, who does not desire to please, desires nothing at all; since he must know that he cannot obtain anything without it.Collection: Men
Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.Collection: Army
Our self-love is mortified, when we think our opinions, and even our tastes, customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemned;as, on the contrary, it is tickled and flattered by approbation.Collection: Love Is
Give Dayrolles a chair.Collection: Giving
The possibility of remedying imprudent actions is commonly an inducement to commit them.Collection: Motivation
The law before us, my lords, seems to be the effect of that practice of which it is intended likewise to be the cause, and to be dictated by the liquor of which it so effectually promotes the use; for surely it never before was conceived by any man entrusted with the administration of public affairs, to raise taxes by the destruction of the people.Collection: Men
Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.Collection: Country
A man of sense soon discovers, because he carefully observes, where and how long he is welcome; and takes care to leave the company at least as soon as he is wished out of it. Fools never perceive whether they are ill timed or ill placed.Collection: Men
It is commonly said that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.Collection: Men
The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.Collection: Loss