Quote

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

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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
Literature
Scandal
Sure
Attack
Ever
Otherwise
Must
Kill
Make
Unless
Wasp
Return
Importunate
Movement
Wasps
Quite
Furious

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Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.
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[Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.
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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.
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The best philosophical attitude to adopt towards the world is a union of the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.
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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.
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In living and in seeing other men, the heart must break or become as bronze.
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We must start human society from scratch as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.
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When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.
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In love, everything is true, everything is false it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.
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Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.
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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.
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Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.
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We justly consider women to be weaker than ourselves, and yet we are governed by them.
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Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.
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Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.
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False modesty is the most decent of all lies.
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It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.
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There some trifles well habited, as there are some fools well clothed.
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Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours it is a palliation death is the remedy.
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Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
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