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Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.
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
May
Men
Reasonably
Aspire
Virtue
Literature
Cannot
Truth
More quotes by Nicolas Chamfort
Wrinkles and ill-nature together made a woman hideous.
Nicolas Chamfort
Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.
Nicolas Chamfort
If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
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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.
Nicolas Chamfort
Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
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Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
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Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.
Nicolas Chamfort
Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.
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
Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.
Nicolas Chamfort
The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
Nicolas Chamfort
The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
Nicolas Chamfort
The contact of two epidermises.
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
All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.
Nicolas Chamfort
Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
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
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
Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.
Nicolas Chamfort
Love is the exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two skins.
Nicolas Chamfort
