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

Nicolas Chamfort

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Nicolas Chamfort
Age: 53 †
Born: 1741
Born: April 6
Died: 1794
Died: April 13
Journalist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Clarmont-Ferrand
France
Laugh
Laughing
Government
Nothing

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To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others this is true morality.
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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.
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In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.
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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.
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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.
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Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.
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Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.
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It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.
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A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.
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If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.
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A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.
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There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.
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Pleasure can be supported by an illusion but happiness rests upon truth.
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If it wasn't for me, I'd do brilliantly.
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In living and in seeing other men, the heart must break or become as bronze.
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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.
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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.
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Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but craving honor, and feeding on selfishness.
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Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.
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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.
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