PHILIP STANHOPE, 4TH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

When a person is in fashion, all they do is right.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.

In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.

Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.

Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.

The more one works, the more willing one is to work.

The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.

Remember, as long as you live, that nothing but strict truth can carry you through the world, with either your conscience or your honor unwounded.

The people never endeavor to ridicule those they love and esteem, nor will they suffer them to be ridiculed. If any one attempts it, their ridicule returns upon the author; he makes himself only the object of public hatred and contempt.

In public, as well as private life, the only way to prevent being ridiculed or censured, is to avoid all ridiculous or wicked measures, and to pursue such only as are virtuous and worthy. If any man thinks he has been ridiculed, upon any of our public theatres, let him examine his actions he will find the cause, let him alter his conduct he will find a remedy

Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that may accompany it.

An inquiry is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

Words, which are the dress of thoughts, deserve surely more care than clothes, which are only the dress of the person.

A young man, be his merit what it will, can never raise himself; but must, like the ivy round the oak, twine himself round some man of great power and interest.

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

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

The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.

Whoever incites anger has a strong insurance against indifference.

Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.

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.

Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

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