Nicolas Chamfort

Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Nicolas Chamfort

Biography : French writer.
Born: 1740 - Died: 1794
Period:
18th century
Place of birth: France
France

France

Nicolas Chamfort - Quotes

Happiness is not easily won; it is hard to find it in ourselves and impossible to find it elsewhere.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.

Whoever has destroyed a prejudice, a single prejudice, is a benefactor of mankind.
Nicolas Chamfort - Discours sur l'influence des grands écrivains /

prejudice

The most completely lost of all days is that on which one has not laughed.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

The most completely lost of all days is that on which one has not laughed.

Give and take pleasure, without harming yourself or anyone else — that, I think, sums up morality.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

morality

Society is composed of two great classes those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

society

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

Esteem is worth more than celebrity, respect is worth more than renown, and honor is worth more than fame.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

value

A man of wit is lost, if to his wit he does not join energy of character. If you have the lantern of Diogenes, you must also have his cudgel.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

character

Passion makes a man live; wisdom only makes him last!
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

One cannot imagine how much wit is necessary in order never to seem ridiculous.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

mind

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

Stupidity

The mind is often at the heart that what the library of a castle is to the master's person.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small things they show themselves as they are.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées /

thing

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

Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
Nicolas Chamfort

Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.
Nicolas Chamfort

The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.
Nicolas Chamfort

society

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.
Nicolas Chamfort

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.
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

One must not hope to be more than one can be.
Nicolas Chamfort

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