Nicolas Chamfort quotes - page 4

Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth. (Nicolas Chamfort)
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.
Nicolas Chamfort
Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
Nicolas Chamfort
Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
Nicolas Chamfort
There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.
Nicolas Chamfort
Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
Nicolas Chamfort
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.
Nicolas Chamfort
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.
Nicolas Chamfort
Having lots of ideas doesn't mean you're clever, any more than having lots of soldiers means you're a good general.
Nicolas Chamfort
Ask of all-healing, all-consoling thought Salve and solace for the woe it wrought.
Nicolas Chamfort
There is something is common between literary, and above all theatrical, reputations and the fortunes which used of old to be made in the West Indies. In the early days it was almost sufficient to reach those islands to return with incalculable riches; but the very vastness of the fortunes thus obtained was prejudicial to those of the following generation, since the exhausted earth could yield no more. (Nicolas Chamfort)
Foolish, ignorant and vicious persons go to books for their thoughts and judgments, and for all their elevated and noble sentiments, just as a rich woman goes with her money to a draper.
Nicolas Chamfort
Feeling creates thought, men willingly agree; but they will not so willingly agree that thought creates feeling, though this is scarcely less true.
Nicolas Chamfort
Despising money is like toppling a king off his throne.
Nicolas Chamfort
Poets, orators, even philosophes, say the same things about fame we were told as boys to encourage us to win prizes. What they tell children to make them prefer being praised to eating jam tarts is the same idea constantly drummed into us to encourage us to sacrifice our real interests in the hope of being praised by our contemporaries or by posterity.
Nicolas Chamfort
Speaking of women's favours, M. de ... used to say: It is an auction room business, and neither feeling nor merit are ever successful bidders.
Nicolas Chamfort
M.... used to warn me that I had one grave disability: I couldn't suffer fools-and their predominance-gladly. He was right and I realized that in society a fool had one great advantage: he was among his peers.
Nicolas Chamfort
Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
Nicolas Chamfort
There is a melancholy that stems from greatness.
Nicolas Chamfort
An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
Nicolas Chamfort
His passions make man live, his wisdom merely makes him last. (Nicolas Chamfort)
There aren't many benefactors who don't say, like Satan: All these things will I give you if you bow down and worship me.
Nicolas Chamfort
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.
Nicolas Chamfort
False modesty is the most decent of all lies.
Nicolas Chamfort
Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.
Nicolas Chamfort