Nicolas Chamfort Quotes - Page 2

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.

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.

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

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

Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.

Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.

I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.

Success makes success, like money makes money.

Conviction is the conscience of intellect.

Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.

Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.

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

Anticipation leads the way to victory, and is the spur to conquest.

One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be idiocy because it has been able to appeal to the majority

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

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

Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.

A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.

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.

Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.

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

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.

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

Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.