Quotes from Nicolas Chamfort

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world.

There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.

Men of reason have endured;men of passion have lived.

A man without nobility cannot have kindliness; he can only have good nature.

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

Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice.

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.

Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change.

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

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.

Were a man to consult only his reason, who would marry? For myself, I wouldn't marry, for fear of having a son who resembled me.

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

Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.

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

Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor still less did she say: Be rich her cry to me was always: Be independent.

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

The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

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.

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

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

Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.