Nicolas chamfort quotes

Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.

Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn.

Success makes success, like money makes money.

He who disguises tyranny, protection, or even benefits under the air and name of friendship reminds me of the guilty priest who poisoned the sacramental bread.

Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.

Marriage, as practised by high society, is arranged indecency.

It is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile.

Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice.

Where violence reigns, reason is weak.

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.

Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.

Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians -- lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character.

Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.

At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.

People are governed by the head; a kind heart is of little value in chess.

Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking.

Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change.

Someone has said that to plagiarise from the ancients is to play the pirate beyond the Equator, but that to steal from the moderns is to pick pockets at street corners.

We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.

People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.

The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.

False modesty is the most decent of all lies.

It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world.

I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.

Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world.

It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.

And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead (suicide note)

Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.

Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.

To possess a good cognomen is a long way on the road of success in life.

In a country where everyone strives for attention, it is better to be bankrupt than to be nothing.

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.

We must start human society from scratch; as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.

Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.

Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.

In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.

To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality.

I only study the things I like; I apply my mind only to matters that interest me. They'll be useful-or useless-to me or to others in due course, I'll be given-or not given-the opportunity of benefiting from what I've learned. In any case, I'll have enjoyed the inestimable advantage of doing things I like doing and following my own inclinations.

A man without nobility cannot have kindliness; he can only have good nature.

One must not hope to be more than one can be.

Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but craving honor, and feeding on selfishness.

Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.

Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours; it is a palliation; death is the remedy.

Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is.

Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.

A lover is a man who tries to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be.

Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.

We take our colors, chameleon-like, from each other.

Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.

Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.

A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.

Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.

A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship.

Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.

Love is the exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two skins.

A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.

Calumny is like the wasp which worries you, and which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it; for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever.

Women of the world crave excitement.

It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.

Egotism is the tongue of vanity.

If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.

When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.

If taking vitamins doesn't keep you healthy enough, try more laughter: The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.

There some trifles well habited, as there are some fools well clothed.

How many fools does it take to make up a public?

Bachelors' wives and old maids' children are always perfect.

Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door.

An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.

Woman's weakness, not man's merit, oftenest gains the suitor's victory.

Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.

Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.

What we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of oneself.

Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.

Narrow waists and narrow minds go together.

Men whose only concern is other people's opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to win the applause of people of poor taste; some of them would be capable of good acting in front of a good audience. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery.

Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later -- this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!

The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.

Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.

She commands who is blest with indifference.

The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.

Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.

We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles.

In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.

A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like hack-horses setting out to gallop.

Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.

If it wasn't for me, I'd do brilliantly.

Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.

A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure.

Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.

It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.

He who leaves the game wins it.

Anticipation leads the way to victory, and is the spur to conquest.

Satire is the disease of art.

Men's hearts and faces are always wide asunder; women's are not only in close connection, but are mirror-like in the instant power of reflection.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

It is commonly supposed that the art of pleasing is a wonderful aid in the pursuit of fortune; but the art of being bored is infinitely more successful.

The best philosophical attitude to adopt towards the world is a union of the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.

It is children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future.

It is among uneducated women that we may look for the most confirmed gossips. Goethe tells us there is nothing more frightful than bustling ignorance.

Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.

One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be idiocy because it has been able to appeal to the majority

Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.

There aren't many benefactors who don't say, like Satan: All these things will I give you if you bow down and worship me.

There is as much expression in the feet as in the hands.

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.

Conviction is the conscience of intellect.

Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.

Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.

Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.

Running a house should be left to innkeepers.

Men of reason have endured;men of passion have lived.

It's a question of prudence. Nobody has a high opinion of fishwives but who would dare offend them while walking through the fish market.

The new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natrual teeth and legs of flesh and bone.

Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.

Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.

There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.

Slander is the balm of malignity.

Vivre est un maladie dont le sommeil nous soulage toutes les 16 heures. C'est un pallatif. La mort est le remede.

There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.

Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible.