Nicolas Chamfort Quotations

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

There is a melancholy that stems from greatness

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

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.

Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.

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

Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the one most surely wasted.

There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are will-dressed fools.

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

The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed.

The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.

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

Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice.

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.

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

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

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

Of lies, false modesty is the most decent.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door.

Be my brother or I will kill you.

Someone described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.

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

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

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.

Chance is a nickname for Providence.

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.

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

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

The contact of two epidermises.

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

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.

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

Women of the world crave excitement.

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.

Success makes success, like money makes money.

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.

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

Running a house should be left to innkeepers.

A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship.

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

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

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

Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The sunset glow of self-possession.

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.

The poor are the blacks of Europe.

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

Satire is the disease of art.

Egotism is the tongue of vanity.