Top 185 Quotes & Sayings by Nicolas Chamfort
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French writer Nicolas Chamfort.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.
All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.
Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?
Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.
People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.
Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
One must not hope to be more than one can be.
There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.
Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.
There is a melancholy that stems from greatness.
Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.
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.
Conviction is the conscience of the mind.
The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.
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.
Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.
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.
Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.
Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.
Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.
Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.
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.
The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.
There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.
Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.
There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
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.
The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.
Society is composed of two great classes those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
False modesty is the most decent of all lies.
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.
Where violence reigns, reason is weak.
Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.
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.
It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.
To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality.
Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
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 children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future.
Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn.
Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking.
Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door.
Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.
If it wasn't for me, I'd do brilliantly.
Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
She commands who is blest with indifference.
Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
Success makes success, like money makes money.
Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.
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