Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride, monseigneur.

In falling over in heels while trying to look attractive, you don't just hurt your body, you bear the humiliation of injuring your very soul. Physical pain? Whatever, bring it on. But the humiliation? Oh, you have seen to the very weakest part of me.

He who discloses his hardship will always be humiliated.

To be weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man.

Wrongs are often forgiven; but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.

My first job, which I had to take when not more than fifteen, was assistant to a fruit peddler. It seemed all right to me until a little girl told me snootily, 'We never deal with peddler!' Thereupon I resigned, ashamed of what I was doing.

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.

I don't get embarrassed.

Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

I have a natural resistance to being humiliated.

I'm just like anyone. I cut and I bleed. And I embarass easily.

The theme is the theme of humiliation, which is the square root of sin, as opposed to the freedom from humiliation, and love, which is the square root of wonderful.

Nobody likes to lose power or reach a point of humility.

We all have our secrets. We all have our vulnerabilities.

I was ashamed for people to see me struggle.

The flip side of humiliation is pride.

Weakness is something we don't like to admit we have. We hold it against people, until we experience it, and then we feel more compassion for it.

I can't understand why people so readily put themselves up to be humiliated.

Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.

I never had any friends beyond a certain superficial level. We hate to admit weaknesses. We were raised to want to get ahead, to be good and clever and successful. You're just ashamed to open up.

Telling my story has not been easy for me. I've had to dredge up memories I would have rather forgotten. The lonely, anxiety-ridden months I avoided others, attempting to hide from interrogations about my social life.

There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

I have no time for being embarrassed.

Like most people, I shrink from exposing my innermost secrets and my most private and intimate actions.