Nicolas Chamfort quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Nicolas Chamfort

Nicolas Chamfort Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Nicolas Chamfort on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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

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

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

A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship.

In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen, in small things they show themselves as they are

All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.

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

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

The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests-a gold mine.

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

Women of the world crave excitement.

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

Running a house should be left to innkeepers.

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

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

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

Though we best know and cannot deny our imperfections, it is not for us to lose our self-reliance and true manhood.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

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.

In great matters, men behave as they are expected to; in little ones, as they would naturally

We justly consider women to be weaker than ourselves, and yet we are governed by them.

Wrinkles and ill-nature together made a woman hideous.

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

[Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.

Slander is the balm of malignity.

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

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

A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.

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

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

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

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

Thought consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it to you.

Wicked people sometimes perform good actions. I suppose they wish to see if this gives as great a feeling of pleasure as the virtuous claim for it.

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

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

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

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

Don't you know that we must always have a place where we never go but where we think we'd be happy if we did?

She commands who is blest with indifference.

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

The sunset glow of self-possession.

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

We gild our medicines with sweets; why not clothe truth and morals in peasant garments as well?

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

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

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

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

Conviction is the conscience of intellect.

And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead. [last words]

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

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

When you want to be well-liked in the world, you have to let a lot of people teach you things that you know and they don't.

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

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

Chance is a nickname for Providence.

Happiness is not easy to find. It's very difficult to find it in yourself - and impossible to find anywhere else.

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

An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.

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

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.

There is a melancholy that stems from greatness of mind.

Where violence reigns, reason is weak.

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

Were a man to consult only his reason, who would marry? For myself, I wouldn't marry, for fear of having a son who resembled me.

The contact of two epidermises.

The majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.

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

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

He who leaves the game wins it.

Knowledge is boundless,
human capacity, limited.

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

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

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

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

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

Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.

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.

Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible.

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

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

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

Egotism is the tongue of vanity.

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

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

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

Be my brother or I will kill you.

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

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

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

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

If we would please in society, we must be prepared to be taught many things we know already by people who do not know them.

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

In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.

Having lots of ideas doesn't mean you're clever, any more than having lots of soldiers means you're a good general.

Tis easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.

Of lies, false modesty is the most decent.

Narrow waists and narrow minds go together.

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