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Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
66 quotes
“Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1750 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 8 May 1750
“Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1750 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1 November 1750
“The manner is often as important as the matter, sometimes more so.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1751 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1751
“You had better refuse a favor gracefully, than to grant it clumsily. Manner is all, in everything: it is by manner only that you can please, and consequently rise. All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your manner, your air, if good, very probably may.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1751 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 18 March 1751
“It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1752 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 6 February 1752
“Let dull critics feed upon the carcasses of plays; give me the taste and the dressing.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1752 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 6 February 1752
“Every woman is infallibly to be gained by every sort of flattery, and every man by one sort or other.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1752 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 16 March 1752
“It is a great advantage for any man to be able to talk or hear, neither ignorantly nor absurdly, upon any subject; for I have known people, who have not said one word, hear ignorantly and absurdly; it has appeared by their inattentive and unmeaning faces.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1752 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 11 May 1752
“A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1753 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 15 January 1753
“There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest; but there is seldom one in which a man should tell all. Great skill is necessary to know how far to go, and where to stop.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1753 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 15 January 1753
“The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1753 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 15 January 1753
“People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1753 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 25 December 1753
“Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct—never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1754 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 26 March 1754
“Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1756 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 14 December 1756
“In short, let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the informations of others.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) first seen 1759 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 16 March 1759
“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 at all.”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) said by 1773 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source