Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

I can tell when I meet you, within three minutes, how you were raised. When I met Lady Gaga on the 'American Horror' set... beautifully brought up.

Though shyness per se was unacceptable, reserve was a mark of good breeding.

By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.

When you are around people who have money, you realise money isn't that impressive, it's about your class, morals and how you conduct yourself.

Those who seek to impress upon us that they are gentlemen will usually be found mistaken.

My theory about meeting people,' he said,'is that it's better not to make a really good first impression. Because it's all downhill from there. You're always having to live up to that first impression, which was just an illusion.

You might be a redneck if you think people that send out graduation announcements are show-offs.

You should always look like a star. Otherwise people will lose a little of the esteem they have for you.

It is a great deal easier for a man to find a pedigree to fit his virtues than virtues to fit his pedigree.

Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice. Birth and good manners are essential; but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company; on the contrary, it will do very well.

Self-confidence is apt to address itself to an imaginary dullness in others; as people who are well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor.

The large and rapid fortunes by which vulgar and ignorant people become possessed of splendid houses, splendidly furnished, do not of course, give them the feelings and manners of gentle folks.

It is in most cases more difficult to make intelligent people believe that you are what you are not, than really to become what you would appear to be.

They are a very decent generous lot of people out here and they don't expect you to listen.... It's the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.

[We are] persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about.

Fashion is nothing more than the temporary custom of rich and idle people who make it their principal business to study the external elegance of life.

Society, by insisting on conventions, has merely insisted on certain convenient signs by which we may know that a man is considering, in daily life, the comfort of other people.

A man . . . must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow.

The kind of person other people perceive you to be controls their responses to you.

The distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such an amazing noise about it.

Somewhere, I had received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could with the sense they had, but Aunt Alexandra was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it was.

I agree that a well groomed appearance or a slovenly appearance says a lot about one's character.

... it takes a great deal to produce ennui in an Englishman and if you do, he only takes it as convincing proof that you are well-bred.

There is this to be said about having money. You get rejected by a higher class of people.