Nicolas Chamfort Quotes

Were a man to consult only his reason, who would marry? For myself, I wouldn't marry, for fear of having a son who resembled me.

Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.

Wicked people sometimes perform good actions. I suppose they wish to see if this gives as great a feeling of pleasure as the virtuous claim for it.

Your intelligence often bears the same relation to your heart as the library of a chateau does to its owner.

Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.

What we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of oneself.

Though we best know and cannot deny our imperfections, it is not for us to lose our self-reliance and true manhood.

[Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.

Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.

Wrinkles and ill-nature together made a woman hideous.

What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.

The majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.

The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests-a gold mine.

Love is like epidemic diseases. The more one fears it the more likely one is to contract it.

There is a melancholy that stems from greatness

Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.

Pleasure can be supported by an illusion, but happiness rests upon truth.

When you want to be well-liked in the world, you have to let a lot of people teach you things that you know and they don't.

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