Quotes By Nicolas Chamfort

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Conviction is the conscience of the mind.

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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