Nicolas Chamfort Quotes
1741–1794 France
Nicolas Chamfort (6 April 1741 – 13 April 1794), born Nicolas-Sébastien Roch, was a French writer.
- France
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- Journalists
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- Poets
Also known as: Chamfort, Chamfort, Nicolas
Random Nicolas Chamfort quote
78 quotes
Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he’s always ready to escape their control.
There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
The Cynic's Breviary : Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort (1902)
There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.
Your intelligence often bears the same relation to your heart as the library of a château does to its owner.
The only thing that stops God sending a second Flood is that the first one was useless.
Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.
Maximes et anecdotes (1795)
Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.
Money is the greatest concern for small characters, but is nothing but the smallest for great characters.
Dans les naïvetés d'un enfant bien né, il y a quelquefois une philosophie bien aimable.
On n'est point un homme d'esprit pour avoir beaucoup d'idées, comme on n'est pas un bon général pour avoir beaucoup de soldats.
Despising money is like toppling a king off his throne.
A man begins every stage of his life as a novice.
Anyone placed at exactly the same distance between yourself and your enemy will always appear closer to your enemy.
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.
La pauvreté met le crime au rabais.
The most completely wasted of all days is that in which we have not laughed.
Do you think then that revolutions are made with rose water?
La Nature ne m'a point dit: ne sois point pauvre; encore moins: sois riche; mais elle me crie: sois indépendant.
Stubbornness equals character roughly as lust equals love.
Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.