Nicolas Chamfort Quotes - Page 7

Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.

Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited.

There is a melancholy that stems from greatness

Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.

Secrecy is best taught by starting with ourselves.

It is said of a lonely man that he does not appreciate the life of society. This is like saying he hates hiking because he dislikes walking in thick forest on a dark night.

The contact of two epidermises.

Though we best know and cannot deny our imperfections, it is not for us to lose our self-reliance and true manhood.

An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.

Tis easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.

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

Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.

We justly consider women to be weaker than ourselves, and yet we are governed by them.

[Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.

If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.

In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.

Wrinkles and ill-nature together made a woman hideous.

There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.

The sunset glow of self-possession.

Chance is a nickname for Providence.

The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests-a gold mine.

Love is like epidemic diseases. The more one fears it the more likely one is to contract it.

The majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.

Thought consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it to you.