110+ Nicolas Chamfort Quotes On Chance, Witty And Satirical

Nicolas Chamfort was a French writer and moralist of the 18th century. He was a contemporary of Voltaire and Rousseau and was known for his wit and his aphorisms. He is best known for his Sémaximes et réflexions morales, a collection of moral maxims and reflections on life and society. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Nicolas Chamfort on chance, witty, satirical.

Top 10 Nicolas Chamfort Quotes

1. A day without laughter is a day wasted.
2. The sunset glow of self-possession.
3. Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
4. There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.
5. The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.
6. Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
7. The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.
8. Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited.
9. Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.
10. We take our colors, chameleon-like, from each other.

Nicolas Chamfort Short Quotes

• False modesty is the most decent of all lies.
• A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.
• Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
• Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
• Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?
• Bachelors' wives and old maids' children are always perfect.
• And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead (suicide note)
• The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society
• There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
• Satire is the disease of art.

Nicolas Chamfort Quotes About Life

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

Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door. — Nicolas Chamfort

Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice. — Nicolas Chamfort

To possess a good cognomen is a long way on the road of success in life. — Nicolas Chamfort

The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live. — Nicolas Chamfort

Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours; it is a palliation; death is the remedy. — Nicolas Chamfort

It is said of a lonely man that he does not appreciate the life of society. This is like saying he hates hiking because he dislikes walking in thick forest on a dark night. — Nicolas Chamfort

Nicolas Chamfort Quotes About Live

An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living. — Nicolas Chamfort

His passions make man live, his wisdom merely makes him last. — Nicolas Chamfort

Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians -- lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character. — Nicolas Chamfort

It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last. — Nicolas Chamfort

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. — Nicolas Chamfort

Men of reason have endured;men of passion have lived. — Nicolas Chamfort

It is children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future. — Nicolas Chamfort

Nicolas Chamfort Quotes About Love

I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me. — Nicolas Chamfort

If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor. — Nicolas Chamfort

Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history. — Nicolas Chamfort

A lover is a man who tries to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be. — Nicolas Chamfort

In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity. — Nicolas Chamfort

What we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of oneself. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

Love is the exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two skins. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame. — Nicolas Chamfort

Nicolas Chamfort Famous Quotes And Sayings

One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be idiocy because it has been able to appeal to the majority — Nicolas Chamfort

Calumny is like the wasp which worries you, and which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it; for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever. — Nicolas Chamfort

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. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

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

If taking vitamins doesn't keep you healthy enough, try more laughter: The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed. — Nicolas Chamfort

Sometimes apparent resemblance of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact. — Nicolas Chamfort

We justly consider women to be weaker than ourselves, and yet we are governed by them. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

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

Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world. — Nicolas Chamfort

The poor are the blacks of Europe. — Nicolas Chamfort

Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem. — Nicolas Chamfort

The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

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. — Nicolas Chamfort

Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors. — Nicolas Chamfort

Chance is a nickname for Providence. — Nicolas Chamfort

Public opinion is the worst of all opinions. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public. — Nicolas Chamfort

Secrecy is best taught by starting with ourselves. — Nicolas Chamfort

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. — Nicolas Chamfort

Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought. — Nicolas Chamfort

Remorse turns us against ourselves. — Nicolas Chamfort

There is a melancholy that stems from greatness. — Nicolas Chamfort

Men whose only concern is other people's opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to win the applause of people of poor taste; some of them would be capable of good acting in front of a good audience. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery. — Nicolas Chamfort

Egotism is the tongue of vanity. — Nicolas Chamfort

Running a house should be left to innkeepers. — Nicolas Chamfort

A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like hack-horses setting out to gallop. — Nicolas Chamfort

Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is. — Nicolas Chamfort

Though we best know and cannot deny our imperfections, it is not for us to lose our self-reliance and true manhood. — Nicolas Chamfort

Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it. — Nicolas Chamfort

Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking. — Nicolas Chamfort

Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity. — Nicolas Chamfort

She commands who is blest with indifference. — Nicolas Chamfort

There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes. — Nicolas Chamfort

Change, change,--we all covet change. — Nicolas Chamfort

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. — Nicolas Chamfort

Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control. — Nicolas Chamfort

It's a question of prudence. Nobody has a high opinion of fishwives but who would dare offend them while walking through the fish market. — Nicolas Chamfort

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate. — Nicolas Chamfort

Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us. — Nicolas Chamfort

What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise. — Nicolas Chamfort

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. — Nicolas Chamfort

Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid. — Nicolas Chamfort

Someone has said that to plagiarise from the ancients is to play the pirate beyond the Equator, but that to steal from the moderns is to pick pockets at street corners. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

It is among uneducated women that we may look for the most confirmed gossips. Goethe tells us there is nothing more frightful than bustling ignorance. — Nicolas Chamfort

Society is composed of two great classes those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners. — Nicolas Chamfort

One must not hope to be more than one can be. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

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

Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

We gild our medicines with sweets; why not clothe truth and morals in peasant garments as well? — Nicolas Chamfort

It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous. — Nicolas Chamfort

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. — Nicolas Chamfort

To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality. — Nicolas Chamfort

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. — Nicolas Chamfort

Where violence reigns, reason is weak. — Nicolas Chamfort

Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible. — Nicolas Chamfort

Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact. — Nicolas Chamfort

Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality. — Nicolas Chamfort

Anticipation leads the way to victory, and is the spur to conquest. — Nicolas Chamfort

All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions. — Nicolas Chamfort

In a country where everyone strives for attention, it is better to be bankrupt than to be nothing. — Nicolas Chamfort

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

Life Lessons by Nicolas Chamfort

1. Nicolas Chamfort taught that life is too short to waste on things that don't matter, and that we should strive to make the most of our time by living with purpose and passion.
2. He also believed that it is important to remain humble and to take responsibility for our own actions, as well as to remain open-minded and accepting of others.
3. Finally, he encouraged us to be mindful of our words and to think before we speak, as words can be powerful and have a lasting impact.