Nicolas Chamfort Quotes - Page 6

A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.

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.

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.

In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.

He who disguises tyranny, protection, or even benefits under the air and name of friendship reminds me of the guilty priest who poisoned the sacramental bread.

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

Men's hearts and faces are always wide asunder; women's are not only in close connection, but are mirror-like in the instant power of reflection.

Woman's weakness, not man's merit, oftenest gains the suitor's victory.

Sometimes apparent resemblance of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact.

Remorse turns us against ourselves.

Women of the world crave excitement.

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.

Women see faults much more readily in each other than they can discover perfections.

His passions make man live, his wisdom merely makes him last.

Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

We gild our medicines with sweets; why not clothe truth and morals in peasant garments as well?

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Be my brother or I will kill you.

All that I've learned, I've forgotten. The little that I still know, I've guessed.

A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.

In the library of the world men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, and the binding; the time is coming when they will take rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic merits.