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L'ambition prend aux petites âmes plus facilement qu'aux grandes, comme le feu prend plus aisément à la paille, aux chaumières qu'aux palais.

— Nicolas Chamfort

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Notes from Wikiquote

Petty souls are more susceptible to ambition than great ones, just as straw or thatched cottages burn more easily than palaces. | Reflections

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Ambition

More quotes by Nicolas Chamfort

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.

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

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To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune, and favor cannot satisfy him.

Jean de La Bruyère Les Caractères (1688)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Nicolas Chamfort (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.