Quotes from Nicolas Chamfort

There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.

Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.

At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.

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

In living and in seeing other men, the heart must break or become as bronze.

It is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile.

Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.

Women of the world crave excitement.

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.

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

Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.

There is a melancholy that stems from greatness.

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.

In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.

The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.

Chance is a nickname for Providence.

Someone described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.

Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.

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.

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Stubbornness equals character roughly as lust equals love.

The only thing that stops God sending a second Flood is that the first one was useless.

The most completely wasted of all days is that in which we have not laughed.