Nicolas Chamfort

Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.

— Nicolas Chamfort

We must start human society from scratch; as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.

— Nicolas Chamfort

It is children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of…

— Nicolas Chamfort

All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.

— Nicolas Chamfort

There some trifles well habited, as there are some fools well clothed.

— Nicolas Chamfort

Bachelors' wives and old maids' children are always perfect.

— Nicolas Chamfort

It is said of a lonely man that he does not appreciate the life of society. This is like saying he hates…

— Nicolas Chamfort

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.

— Nicolas Chamfort

Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which,…

— Nicolas Chamfort

He who leaves the game wins it.

— Nicolas Chamfort

An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the…

— Nicolas Chamfort

“Don't you know that we must always have a place where we never go but where we think we'd be happy if…

— Nicolas Chamfort

Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.

— Nicolas Chamfort

Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others.…

— Nicolas Chamfort

There aren't many benefactors who don't say, like Satan: All these things will I give you if you bow down and worship…

— Nicolas Chamfort

False modesty is the most decent of all lies.

— Nicolas Chamfort

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

— Nicolas Chamfort

The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far…

— Nicolas Chamfort

A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of…

— Nicolas Chamfort

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

— Nicolas Chamfort

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

— Nicolas Chamfort

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

— Nicolas Chamfort

If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.

— Nicolas Chamfort

In the library of the world men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, and the binding; the time is coming…

— Nicolas Chamfort

There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.

— Nicolas Chamfort