Nicolas Chamfort Quotes

In the world you have three sorts of friends: your friends who love you, your friends who do not care about you and your friends who hate you.

There are people who feel the need to be prominent, to rise above their fellow men, at all costs. Their whole concern is to play the charlatan in full view of everyone: on the stage, on the throne or on the gallows, they'll always feel fine as long as they're the centre of attention.

Ask of all-healing, all-consoling thought Salve and solace for the woe it wrought.

La pensée console de tout et remédie à tout. Si quelquefois elle vous fait du mal, demandez-lui le remède du mal qu'elle vous a fait, elle vous le donnera.

And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead.

Je m'en vais enfin de ce monde, où il faut que le cœur se brise ou se bronze.

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

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

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

Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.

Anyone who has no character is not a man, but a thing.

Quiconque n'a pas de caractère n'est pas un homme, c'est une chose.

High society is a poor play, a bad, boring opera, made slightly better by its staging, costumes and scenery.

A man well-known to be a liar had just told a most improbable story. “Sir, while I believe you,” someone said, “you must admit that it's very wrong of truth not to condescend to be more plausible.”

A man begins every stage of his life as a novice.