Best 144 quotes of Nicolas Chamfort on MyQuotes

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.

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

All that I've learned, I've forgotten. The little that I still know, I've guessed.

Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.

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 without nobility cannot have kindliness; he can only have good nature.

A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship.

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.

And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead (suicide note)

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.

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

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.

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

Bachelors' wives and old maids' children are always perfect.

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.

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

Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.

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

Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible.

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.

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

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.

Egotism is the tongue of vanity.

Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.

False modesty is the most decent of all lies.

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.

Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.

If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.

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

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.

If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.