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One must not hope to be more than one can be.

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
Acceptance
Literature
Hope
Must

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She commands who is blest with indifference.
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In living and in seeing other men, the heart must break or become as bronze.
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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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Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.
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Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.
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Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.
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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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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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Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited.
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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.
Nicolas Chamfort
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In great matters, men behave as they are expected to in little ones, as they would naturally
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The new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natrual teeth and legs of flesh and bone.
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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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Chance is a nickname for Providence.
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Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.
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There is as much expression in the feet as in the hands.
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Men of reason have enduredmen of passion have lived.
Nicolas Chamfort
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In the library of the world men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, and the binding the time is coming when they will take rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic merits.
Nicolas Chamfort
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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
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A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship.
Nicolas Chamfort