Nicolas Chamfort quotes:

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Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.
Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
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.
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.
People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.
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.
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.
Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.
I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.
Society is composed of two great classes those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.
Conviction is the conscience of the mind.
If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.
The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society
Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
People are governed by the head; a kind heart is of little value in chess.
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 with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.
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.
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.
A man without nobility cannot have kindliness; he can only have good nature.
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.
There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.
If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.
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.
Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests-a gold mine.
Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
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.
Someone described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.
We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles.
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
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.
All that I've learned, I've forgotten. The little that I still know, I've guessed.
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.
Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn.
Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?
Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.
And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead (suicide note)
Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world.
There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.
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.
Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.
The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.
Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.
Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.
There is a melancholy that stems from greatness.
The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.
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.
All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.
There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
[Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.
A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like hack-horses setting out to gallop.
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.
A lover is a man who tries to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be.
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.
A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.
A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship.
A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure.
A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.
Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.
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.
An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
Anticipation leads the way to victory, and is the spur to conquest.
Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.
Bachelors' wives and old maids' children are always perfect.
Be my brother or I will kill you.
Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.
Chance is a nickname for Providence.
Change, change,--we all covet change.
Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.
Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible.
Conviction is the conscience of intellect.
Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but craving honor, and feeding on selfishness.
Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door.
Egotism is the tongue of vanity.
Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.
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.
He who leaves the game wins it.
His passions make man live, his wisdom merely makes him last.
Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.
How many fools does it take to make up a public?
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.
If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.
If it wasn't for me, I'd do brilliantly.
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.
In great matters, men behave as they are expected to; in little ones, as they would naturally
In living and in seeing other men, the heart must break or become as bronze.
In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.
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.
In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.
In the library of the world men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, and the binding; the time is coming when they will take rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic merits.
Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.
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.
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 inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.
It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.
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.
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.
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.
Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited.
Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours; it is a palliation; death is the remedy.
Love is like epidemic diseases. The more one fears it the more likely one is to contract it.
Love is the exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two skins....
Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.
Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice.
Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.
Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
Marriage, as practised by high society, is arranged indecency.
Men of reason have endured;men of passion have lived.
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.
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.
Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.

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