Nicolas Chamfort Quotes

Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.

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

We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.

We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles.

There some trifles well habited, as there are some fools well clothed.

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

Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

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.

Woman's weakness, not man's merit, oftenest gains the suitor's victory.

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

In living and in seeing other men, the heart must break or become as bronze.

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

Chance is a nickname for Providence.

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.

There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.

Men of reason have endured;men of passion have lived.

Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.

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.

Love is the exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two skins.

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

A lover is a man who tries to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be.

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.

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

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

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

In great matters, men behave as they are expected to; in little ones, as they would naturally

Be my brother or I will kill you.

We justly consider women to be weaker than ourselves, and yet we are governed by them.

In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.

Satire is the disease of art.

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.

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

The poor are the blacks of Europe.

Secrecy is best taught by starting with ourselves.

Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice.

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.

To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality.

Where violence reigns, reason is weak.

There is as much expression in the feet as in the hands.

Egotism is the tongue of vanity.

Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.

How many fools does it take to make up a public?

Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.

Remorse turns us against ourselves.

Success makes success, like money makes money.

She commands who is blest with indifference.

Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change.

Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.