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

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

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

Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
Nicolas de Chamfort

Conviction is the conscience of the mind.
Nicolas de Chamfort

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?
Nicolas de Chamfort

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

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

It is commonly supposed that the art of pleasing is a wonderful aid in the pursuit of fortune; but the art of being bored is infinitely more successful.
Nicolas de 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 De Chamfort

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

Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
Nicolas de Chamfort

Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.
Nicolas de Chamfort

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
Nicolas de 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 De 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 de Chamfort

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

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
Nicolas de Chamfort

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

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