dots-menu
×

Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Chesterfield

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Chesterfield

Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defence of manners.

Chapter of accidents.

Despatch is the soul of business.

Every man seeks the truth, but God only knows who has found it.

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

Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant.

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

History is only a confused heap of facts.

Knowledge is a retreat and shelter for us in advanced age; and if we do not plant it when young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

Let no complaisance, no gentleness of temper, no weak desire of pleasing on your part, no wheedling, coaxing, nor flattery on other people’s, make you recede one jot from any point that reason and prudence have bid you pursue.

Let the great book of the world be your principal study.

Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but let them feel, at the same time, the steadiness of your just resentment.

Literature, like virtue, is its own reward.

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true wit or good sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world.

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.

Next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing.

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

Style is the dress of thoughts.

“Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re,”—I do not know any one rule so unexceptionally useful and necessary in every part of life.

The scholar without good-breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable.

There is a great difference between bearing malice, which is always ungenerous, and a resolute self-defence, which is always prudent and justifiable.

Unlike my subject now shall be my song; / It shall be witty, but it shan’t be long.

Venus will not charm so much without her attendant Graces, as they will without her.

Very few people are good economists of their fortune, and still fewer of their time.

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one. If you are asked what o’clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchmen.

Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him. Haste and hurry are very different things.

Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it for ever. It implies a discovery of weaknesses, which we are much more careful to conceal than crimes. Many a man will confess his crimes to a common friend, but I never knew a man who would tell his silly weaknesses to his most intimate one.

Yielding, timid weakness is always abused and insulted by the unjust and unfeeling; but meekness, when sustained by the “fortiter in re,” is always respected, commonly successful.

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