Nicolas Chamfort Quotes

The sunset glow of self-possession.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

False modesty is the most decent of all lies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.

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

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

The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

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

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

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

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.

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

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

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.

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.

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.