lontananza

Updated: June 14, 2025

I often paint you in my imagination, in your present 'lontananza', and, while I view you in the light of ancient and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill-bred, with vulgar air and manners, shambling toward me with inattention and DISTRACTIONS, I shall not pretend to describe to you what I feel; but will do as a skillful painter did formerly draw a veil before the countenance of the father.

Earl of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield - Complete Project Gutenberg Earl of Chesterfield Works

I often paint you in my imagination, in your present 'lontananza', and, while I view you in the light of ancient and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill-bred, with vulgar air and manners, shambling toward me with inattention and DISTRACTIONS, I shall not pretend to describe to you what I feel; but will do as a skillful painter did formerly draw a veil before the countenance of the father.

Earl of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield - Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, 1749