Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes (65 quotes)

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield: 65 quotes3 likes

Famous Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

“Marriage is the cure of love, and friendship the cure of marriage.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Detached Thoughts http://books.google.com/books?id=vVdSAAAAcAAJ&q=%22Marriage+is+the+cure+of+love+and+friendship+the+cure+of+marriage%22&pg=PA384#v=onepage, first published in Letters and Works of Philip Dormer Stanhope, volume 5 (1847)

“Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in a mixed company.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Letter to his godson, No.112 (undated)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

29 January 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

5 September 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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

1 July 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

8 May 1750
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes about people

“Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. 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.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

22 February 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

10 August 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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 unmeaning faces.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

11 May 1752
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

25 December 1753
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

19 November 1745
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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

15 January 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes about the world

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

4 October 1746
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“I assisted at the birth of that most significant word "flirtation," which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

The World, No. 101 (5 December 1754)

“Courts and camps are the only places to learn the world in.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

2 October 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

2 October 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield: Trending quotes

“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 pursuit of it.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

19 December 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Context: 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 pursuit of it. No, we are complicated machines; and though we have one main spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometime stop that motion.

“The characteristic of a well-bred man is, to converse with his inferiors without insolence, and with his superiors with respect and with ease.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

17 March 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

5 February 1750
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

19 December 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

16 March 1752
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Letter
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow, who used to say, "Take care of the pence, for the pounds will take care of themselves."”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

6 November 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Then in chat, or at play, with a dance, or a song,
Let the night, like the day, pass with pleasure along.
All cares, but of love, banish far from your mind;
And those you may end, when you please to be kind.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"Advice to a Lady in Autumn", published in A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. I. (1763), printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley

“Cheerful with wisdom, with innocence gay,
And calm with your joys gently glide thro' the day.
The dews of the evening most carefully shun —
Those tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"Advice to a Lady in Autumn", published in A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. I. (1763), printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley

“Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

22 May 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Mark in the meadows the ruin of Time;
Take the hint, and let life be improv'd in its prime.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"Advice to a Lady in Autumn", published in A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. I. (1763), printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson

“There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

14 April 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Dispatch is the soul of business.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

5 February 1750
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

The French attribute this to the painter Nicolas Poussin (born 15 June 1594) "Ce qui vaut la peine d'être fait vaut la peine d'être bien fait"
Disputed

“The chapter of knowledge is a very short, but the chapter of accidents is a very long one.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

To Solomon Dayrolles (16 February 1753)

“The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

7 February 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

15 January 1753
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

20 July 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“You foolish man, you do not understand your own foolish business.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Attributed to Chesterfield by George Agar-Ellis, 1st Baron Dover, in his 1833 edition of Horace Walpole's letters to Sir Horace Mann, such statements have been attributed to many others, such as Lord Chief Justice Campbell, William Henry Maule (in the form "You silly old fool, you don't even know the alphabet of your own silly old business"), Sir William Harcourt, Lord Pembroke, Lord Westbury, and to an anonymous judge, and said to have been spoken in court to Garter King at Arms, Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, or some other high-ranking herald, who had confused a "bend" with a "bar" or had demanded fees to which he was not entitled. George Bernard Shaw uses it in Pygmalion (1912) in the form, "The silly people dont [sic] know their own silly business." Similar remarks occur in Charles Jenner's The Placid Man: Or, The Memoirs of Sir Charles Beville (1770): "Sir Harry Clayton ... was perhaps far better qualified to have written a Peerage of England than Garter King at Arms, or Rouge Dragon, or any of those parti-coloured officers of the court of honor, who, as a great man complained on a late solemnity, are but too often so silly as not to know their own silly business." "Old Lord Pembroke" (Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke) is said by Horace Walpole (in a letter of 28 May 1774 to the Rev. William Cole) to have directed the quip, "Thou silly fellow! Thou dost not know thy own silly business," at John Anstis, Garter King at Arms. Edmund Burke also quotes such a remark in his "Speech in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq." on 7 May 1789: "'Silly man, that dost not know thy own silly trade!' was once well said: but the trade here is not silly."
Disputed

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

6 February 1752
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Unlike my subject will I frame my song,
It shall be witty, and it shan't be long.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Epigram on ("Long") Sir Thomas Robinson

“Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

22 February 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Generally attributed to Lord Chesterfield, the first publication of this yet located is in a section of proverbs called "Diamond Dust" in Eliza Cook's Journal, No. 98 (15 March 1851), with the first attribution to Chesterfield as yet located in: Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1862) edited by Henry Southgate
Disputed

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

15 January 1753
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latter deserve. 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.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

6 December 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

1751
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

9 October 1746
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

15 January 1753
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“He adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote upon, by the most splendid eloquence.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Character of Bolingbroke; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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

18 March 1751
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Character of Pulteney; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Take the tone of the company you are in.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

16 October 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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 to the party concerned. This is of all flattery the most pleasing, and consequently the most effectual.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

22 May 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

26 March 1754
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

16 March 1759
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

9 March 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

6 February 1752
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

1 November 1750
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; “they will both fall into the ditch.””

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

24 November 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“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.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

14 December 1756
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

21 September 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

9 October 1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“I recommend you to take care of the minutes: for hours will take care of themselves.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

1747
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Variant: I recommend you to take care of the minutes: for hours will take care of themselves.

“Style is the dress of thoughts.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

24 November 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

9 March 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Sacrifice to the Graces.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

9 March 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness its poison. ”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

“We must not draw general conclusions from certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. 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. No. We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.”