Nicolas Chamfort quotes - page 5

Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity. (Nicolas Chamfort)
He who leaves the game wins it. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians -- lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
Your intelligence often bears the same relation to your heart as the library of a chateau does to its owner. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
The poor are the blacks of Europe. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
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. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
Middle-class women who entertain the hope or fancy of being something in the world, lose Nature's happiness and miss Society's. They are the most unfortunate creatures I have known. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
A witty woman once told me something which may well be the genuine secret of her sex: that in choosing a lover each one of her kind takes more account of how other women regard him than of how she regards him herself. (Nicolas Chamfort)
Most social institutions seem to be designed to keep man in a state of intellectual and emotional mediocrity that makes him more fit to govern or be governed. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort
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!”. View quote
Nicolas Chamfort