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Nicolas Chamfort Quotes
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Society would be a charming thing if we were only interested in one another.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Love pleases more than marriage, for the reason that romance is more interesting than history.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Love is a malicious blind boy, who seeks to blind the eyes of his guide, that both may go astray together.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Stubbornness equals character roughly as lust equals love.
Nicolas Chamfort
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The best philosophy to employ toward the world is to alloy the sarcasm of gayety with the indulgence of contempt.
Nicolas Chamfort
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When I hear it contended that the least sensitive are, on the whole, the most happy, I recall the Indian proverb: "It's better to sit than to stand, it is better lie down than to sit, but death is best of all."
Nicolas Chamfort
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We have three kinds of friends: those who love us, those who are indifferent to us, and those who hate us.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Few people are able to appreciate a philosopher; he's almost a sort of public enemy. Faced by the various pretensions of mankind, …he says bluntly: "I'm prepared to take you only at your true value, what you're really worth." It's not easy to get people to appreciate anyone who makes such an uncompromising declaration.
Nicolas Chamfort
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There is a kind of harmful modesty which … sometimes affects men of superior character to their detriment by keeping them in a state of mediocrity. I am reminded of the remark that a certain gentleman of acknowledged eminence once made at luncheon to some persons of the Court, "How bitterly I regret the time I wasted merely to learn how superior I am to all of you!"
Nicolas Chamfort
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In cities the old are more corrupt than the young.
Nicolas Chamfort
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The change of fashions is the tax that the industry of the poor levies on the vanity of the rich.
Nicolas Chamfort
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What is a philosopher? One who opposes nature to law, reason to usage, conscience to opinion, and his judgment to error.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Women of the world never use harsh expressions when condemning their rivals. Like the savage, they hurl elegant arrows, ornamented with feathers of purple and azure, but with poisoned points.
Nicolas Chamfort
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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.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Despising money is like toppling a king off his throne.
Nicolas Chamfort
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The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.
Nicolas Chamfort
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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
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There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.
Nicolas Chamfort
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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.
Nicolas Chamfort
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All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.
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That a liaison between a man and a woman may be truly interesting, there must be between them enjoyment, remembrance, or desire.
Nicolas Chamfort
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The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests — a gold mine.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.
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The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
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Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Nicolas Chamfort
Creative Commons
Born:
April 6, 1741
Died:
April 13, 1794
(aged 53)
Bio:
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas, also known as Chamfort, was a French writer, best known for his witty epigrams and aphorisms. He was secretary to Louis XVI's sister, and of the Jacobin club.
Most used words:
man
society
people
love
public
nature
reason
women
woman
true
poor
age
mediocrity
ideas
happiness
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