Quotes by Lord Chesterfield

"Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked."

"Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it merely to show that you have one."

"Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet."

"Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them."

"Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh."

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

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

"A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones."

"Regularity in the hours of rising and retiring, perseverance in exercise, adaptation of dress to the variations of climate, simple and nutritious aliment, and temperance in all things are necessary branches of the regimen of health."

"Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another."

"If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you."

"I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united and when one suffers, the other sympathizes."

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

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

"In seeking wisdom thou art wise in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool."

"The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older."