Nicolas Chamfort Quotes

157 Sourced Quotes

To help a man suffering from dropsy, it's far better to cure his thirst than to offer him a barrel of wine. Apply this principle to the wealthy.

Nicolas Chamfort
Unfortunately for mankind—and perhaps fortunately for tyrants—the poor and downtrodden lack the instinct or pride of the elephant, who refuses to breed in captivity.

Nicolas Chamfort
Our gratitude to most benefactors is the same as our feeling for dentists who have pulled our teeth. We acknowledge the good they have done and the evil from which they have delivered us, but we remember the pain they occasioned and do not love them very much.

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

Nicolas Chamfort
The best way to put the shortcomings of society, and, indeed, the whole of mankind, in their proper place is to joke about them. Joking allows you to avoid compromising yourself; it's a proof of your superiority over … the things you're poking fun at, without causing any offense to anyone except people who are surly or uncouth.

Nicolas Chamfort
The public! the public! How many fools does it take to make up a public?

Nicolas Chamfort
The public is governed as it reasons; its own prerogative is foolish speech and that of its governors is foolish action.

Nicolas Chamfort
What is responsible for the success of many works is the rapport between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and the mediocrity of the public's.

Nicolas Chamfort
Nowadays, those who love nature are accused of being romantic.

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

Nicolas Chamfort
Love, as it exists in society, is nothing but the exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two skins.

Nicolas Chamfort
Was man made to disdain the gifts of nature? Was he placed on earth but to gather bitter fruits? For whom are the flowers the gods cause to bloom at the feet of mortals? It pleases Providence when we abandon ourselves to the different inclinations that He has given us: our duties come from His laws, and our desires from His inspirations.

Nicolas Chamfort
There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.

Nicolas Chamfort
Scripture says, "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord." I say, "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of man."

Nicolas Chamfort
We may wager that any idea of the public, or any general opinion, is a folly, since it has received the approbation of a majority of the people.

Nicolas Chamfort
What I admire in the ancient philosophers is their desire to make their lives conform to their writings, a trait which we notice in Plato, Theophrastus and many others. Practical morality was so truly their philosophy's essence that many, such as Xenocrates, Polemon, and Speusippus, were placed at the head of schools although they had written nothing at all. Socrates was none the less the foremost philosopher of his age, although he had not composed a single book or studied any other science than ethics.

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

Nicolas Chamfort
In experiencing the ills of nature, one despises death; in learning the evils of society, one despises life.

Nicolas Chamfort
That a liaison between a man and a woman may be truly interesting, there must be between them enjoyment, remembrance, or desire.

Nicolas Chamfort
The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests — a gold mine.

Nicolas Chamfort
All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.

Nicolas Chamfort
The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.

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

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

Nicolas Chamfort
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
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