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| Philip Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield |
“Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you. Follow nature and not fashion: weigh the present enjoyment of your pleasures against the necessary consequences of them, and then let your own common sense determine your choice.”
“Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.”
“There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in they year, if you will do two things at a time.”
“Listen to everything that is said, and see everything that is done. Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth than from what they say. But then keep all those observations to yourself, for your own private use, and rarely communicate them to others. Observe, without being thought an observer, for otherwise people will be upon their guard before you.”
“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.”
Philip, Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman'
