Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) was an English statesman, diplomat, man of letters, and a much-admired wit of his time. Many of his leading contemporaries praised Chesterfield’s courteous manners, urbanity, and wit.
Stanhope wrote Lord Chesterfield’s Advice to his Son, on Men and Manners (1774,) a guide to manners and success, which essayist Samuel Johnson denounced as teaching “the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.”
Born in London, Lord Chesterfield was a Member of Parliament 1715–c.1723. In 1730, he was made Lord Steward of the household. Until then, as a Whig, he had supported Sir Robert Walpole; but being expelled from office for voting against an excise bill, he became one of Walpole’s harshest antagonists. Chesterfield joined the ministry of Thomas Pelham-Holles in 1744, became Irish Lord Lieutenant in 1745, and was one of the principal secretaries of state in 1746.
Lord Chesterfield is the acclaimed author of Maxims, the popular title for the collection of letters of advice he wrote to his illegitimate son, to help him overcome the handicap of his birth (only legitimate sons could inherit.) The letters, dating from 1736, were published in 1774 by Philip’s widow. Originally titled Lord Chesterfield’s Advice to his Son, on Men and Manners; or, a New system of Education in Which the Principles of Politeness, the Art of Acquiring a Knowledge of the World, with Every Instruction Necessary to Form a Man of Honour, Virtue, Taste and Fashion are Laid Down, the letters are the forerunner of a modern self-help book.
Friendly with Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, Voltaire, and Viscount Bolingbroke, Lord Chesterfield drew from Samuel Johnson a famous indignant letter. Besides the Letters to His Son, he also wrote Letters to his Godson and Successor (1890.) His Letters to Lord Huntingdon were published in 1923.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Earl of Chesterfield
Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things, and which they call being merry.—In my mind there is nothing so ill-bred as audible laughter.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Laughter
A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Humor, Wit
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Reading
Learn to dance, not so much for the sake of dancing, as for coming into a room and presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully.—Women, whom you ought to endeavor to please, cannot forgive a vulgar and awkward air and gestures.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Dancing
Flattery, though a base coin, is the necessary pocket-money at court; where, by custom and consent, it has obtained such a currency, that it is no longer a fraudulent, but a legal payment.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Flattery
Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defense of manners.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Manners, Defense
Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it, than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Miscellaneous, Perfection, Goals, Aspirations, Perfectionism
Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Proverbial Wisdom
Frequent and loud laughing is the characteristic of folly and ill-manners.—True wit never made a man laugh.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Laughter
If you can once engage people’s pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Pride, Reason
It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Wit
I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Mind, The Mind
Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Self-Discovery, Egotism, Ego
To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Vanity
A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Action
Let the great book of the world be your principle study.
—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 all; whereas those who have a great deal of business, must (to use a vulgar expression) buckle to it; and then they always find time enough to do it in.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Work, Time Management, Productivity, Idleness, Time, Procrastination, Occupation, Busy
A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.
—Earl of Chesterfield
I have run the silly rounds of pleasure, and have done with them all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, and I appraise them at their real worth, which is in truth very low; those who have only seen their outside always overrate them, but I have been behind the scenes, I have seen all the coarse pulleys and dirty ropes which move the gaudy machines, and I have seen and smelt the tallow candles which illuminate the whole decoration, to the astonishment and admiration of the ignorant audience. When I reflect on what I have seen, what I have heard, and what I have done, I can hardly persuade myself that all that frivolous hurry and bustle of pleasure in the world had any reality; but I look upon all that is passed as one of those romantic dreams which opium commonly occasions, and I do by no means desire to repeat the nauseous dose.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: World
Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Control, Aspirations, Dedication, Commitment, Goals
Real friendship is a slow grower and never thrives unless engrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Friendship
Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.—Haste and hurry are very different things.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Action, Haste
Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and laborious attentions to little objects which neither require nor deserve a moment’s thought, lower a man, who from thence is thought, and not unjustly, incapable of greater matters.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Trifles, Mind
I assisted at the birth of that most significant word flirtation, which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world, and which has since received the sanction of our most accurate Laureate in one of his comedies.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always its destroyers too, by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Army
Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Style
Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person; if her face is so shocking that she must in some degree be conscious of it, her figure and her air, she trusts, make ample amends for it.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Flattery
When a man seeks your advice he generally wants your praise.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Advice
The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not a closet.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Knowledge, Experience
Cautiously avoid speaking of the domestic affairs either of yourself, or of other people. Yours are nothing to them but tedious gossip; and theirs are nothing to you.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Family, Talking
Men have various subjects in which they may excel, or at least would be thought to excel, and though they love to hear justice done to them where they know they excel, yet they are most and best flattered upon those points where they wish to excel and yet are doubtful whether they do or not.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Excellence
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Knowledge
Be your character what it will, it will be known; and nobody will take it upon your word.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Character
If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Persuasion
You must look into other people as well as at them.
—Earl of Chesterfield
The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Heart, Age
Many new years you may see, but happy ones you cannot see without deserving them. These virtue, honor, and knowledge alone can merit, alone can produce.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Virtue
A man who owes a little can clear it off in a little time, and, if he is prudent, he will: whereas a man, who, by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Debt
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Humility, Compliments, Modesty
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.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Pleasure
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