Top 100 Nicolas Chamfort Quotes
#1. A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.
Nicolas Chamfort
#3. Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking.
Nicolas Chamfort
#4. Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
Nicolas Chamfort
#5. Women see faults much more readily in each other than they can discover perfections.
Nicolas Chamfort
#6. 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?
Nicolas Chamfort
#7. Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.
Nicolas Chamfort
#8. The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.
Nicolas Chamfort
#11. Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.
Nicolas Chamfort
#12. Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.
Nicolas Chamfort
#13. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#16. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#17. Anticipation leads the way to victory, and is the spur to conquest.
Nicolas Chamfort
#18. Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
Nicolas Chamfort
#19. Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.
Nicolas Chamfort
#20. Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.
Nicolas Chamfort
#21. Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.
Nicolas Chamfort
#22. There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
Nicolas Chamfort
#23. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#24. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#27. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#28. A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.
Nicolas Chamfort
#29. In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen, in small things they show themselves as they are
Nicolas Chamfort
#30. Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
Nicolas Chamfort
#31. In a country where everyone is trying to be noticed, it is better to be bankrupt than to be nothing.
Nicolas Chamfort
#32. His passions make man live, his wisdom merely makes him last.
Nicolas Chamfort
#33. The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
Nicolas Chamfort
#36. Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
Nicolas Chamfort
#37. Bachelors' wives and old maids' children are always perfect.
Nicolas Chamfort
#38. The best philosophical attitude to adopt towards the world is a union of the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.
Nicolas Chamfort
#39. Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
Nicolas Chamfort
#40. Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn.
Nicolas Chamfort
#42. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#43. A lover is a man who tries to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be.
Nicolas Chamfort
#46. If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
Nicolas Chamfort
#47. Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.
Nicolas Chamfort
#48. All that I've learned, I've forgotten. The little that I still know, I've guessed.
Nicolas Chamfort
#49. Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.
Nicolas Chamfort
#50. Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.
Nicolas Chamfort
#52. A man without nobility cannot have kindliness; he can only have good nature.
Nicolas Chamfort
#54. If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.
Nicolas Chamfort
#55. The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.
Nicolas Chamfort
#56. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#58. Someone described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.
Nicolas Chamfort
#59. Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.
Nicolas Chamfort
#60. Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.
Nicolas Chamfort
#61. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#64. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#65. We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
Nicolas Chamfort
#67. We justly consider women to be weaker than ourselves, and yet we are governed by them.
Nicolas Chamfort
#68. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#70. Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.
Nicolas Chamfort
#71. It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.
Nicolas Chamfort
#72. Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
Nicolas Chamfort
#73. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#74. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#77. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#78. If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.
Nicolas Chamfort
#81. The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.
Nicolas Chamfort
#82. Tis easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.
Nicolas Chamfort
#83. It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.
Nicolas Chamfort
#84. Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.
Nicolas Chamfort
#85. Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.
Nicolas Chamfort
#86. It is children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future.
Nicolas Chamfort
#88. What we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of oneself.
Nicolas Chamfort
#90. Sometimes apparent resemblance of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact.
Nicolas Chamfort
#92. Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.
Nicolas Chamfort
#93. Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
Nicolas Chamfort
#94. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#95. To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality.
Nicolas Chamfort
#96. Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
Nicolas Chamfort
#99. 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.
Nicolas Chamfort
#100. It is said of a lonely man that he does not appreciate the life of society. This is like saying he hates hiking because he dislikes walking in thick forest on a dark night.
Nicolas Chamfort
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