Nicolas Chamfort Quotes - Page 5

Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but craving honor, and feeding on selfishness.

Running a house should be left to innkeepers.

The new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natrual teeth and legs of flesh and bone.

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

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

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

Vivre est un maladie dont le sommeil nous soulage toutes les 16 heures. C'est un pallatif. La mort est le remede.

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

Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is.

In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.

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

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.

Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.

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

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

Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.

Slander is the balm of malignity.

All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.

People are governed by the head; a kind heart is of little value in chess.

If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.

Someone described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.

An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.

We must start human society from scratch; as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.

Men whose only concern is other people's opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to win the applause of people of poor taste; some of them would be capable of good acting in front of a good audience. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery.

Satire is the disease of art.