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
Spirit is now a very fashionable word; to act with spirit, to speak with spirit, means only to act rashly, and to talk indiscreetly. An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions; he is neither hot nor timid.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Spirit
Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Inferiority
The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of a superior genius.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Attention
There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Insults, Injury
A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Action
The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon his dress; and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time he knows he must not neglect it.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Fashion, Dress
Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Laughter
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
—Earl of Chesterfield
‘All Mr. Pitt’s sentiments were liberal and elevated. His ruling passion was an unbounded ambition, which, when supported by great abilities and crowned with great success, make (sic) what the world calls a great man. He was haughty, imperious, impatient of contradiction, and over-bearing; qualities which too often accompany, but always clog, great ones
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Leadership
Great talents, such as honor, virtue, learning, and parts, are above the generality of the world, who neither possess them themselves, nor judge of them rightly in others; but all people are judges of the lesser talents, such as civility, affability, and an obliging, agreeable address and manner, because they feel the good effects of them, as making society easy and pleasing.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Talent
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.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Flattery
We are in truth, more than half what we are by imitation. The great point is to choose good models and to study them with care.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Example
How often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, and even rejected, while flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired!
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Manners
What you don’t know can hurt you.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Education
Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way in the world; without them it is like a great rough diamond, very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but most prized when polished.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Manners
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
A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Secrecy, Mystery
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
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: Mind, Trifles
Choose the company of your superiors whenever you can have it; that is the right and true pride.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Associates
Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. It implies a discovery of weakness, which we are more careful to conceal than a crime. Many a man will confess his crimes to a friend; but I never knew a man that would tell his silly weaknesses to his most intimate one.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Forgiveness
When a man seeks your advice he generally wants your praise.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Advice
Dress yourself fine, where others are fine, and plain, where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward sir.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Dress
It has been 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 viewed 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.
—Earl of Chesterfield
If a fool knows a secret, he tells it because he is a fool: if a knave knows one, he tells it whenever it is his interest to tell it. But women and young men are very apt to tell what secrets they know, from the vanity of having been trusted. Trust none of these whenever you can help it.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Secrecy
A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Silence
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. The scholar, who in the dust of his closet talks or writes of the world, knows no more of it than that orator did of war, who endeavored to instruct Hannibal in it.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: World
Take rather than give the tone of the company you are in.—If you have parts, you will show them, more or less, upon every subject; and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people’s choosing than of your own.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Conformity, Defects
The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not a closet.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Experience, Knowledge
People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Emotions
In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Laughter
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
Adorn yourself with all those graces and accomplishments which, without solidity, are frivolous; but without which, solidity is to a great degree useless.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Manners
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
If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Fashion
The manner of speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Eloquence
Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Vice, Virtue
Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Vanity
While I can crawl upon this planet I think myself obliged to do what good I can, in my narrow domestic spheres, to my fellow creatures, and to wish them all the good I cannot do.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Goodness
Fear manifested invites danger; concealed cowards insult known ones.
—Earl of Chesterfield
Topics: Fear
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