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

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
Poor
Levied
Change
Vanity
Taxes
Taste
Industry
Fashion
Rich
Literature

More quotes by Nicolas Chamfort

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Men of reason have enduredmen of passion have lived.
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His passions make man live, his wisdom merely makes him last.
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One must not hope to be more than one can be.
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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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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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Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice.
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There is as much expression in the feet as in the hands.
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Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
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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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All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.
Nicolas Chamfort
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The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
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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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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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It is children only who enjoy the present their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future.
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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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False modesty is the most decent of all lies.
Nicolas Chamfort
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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.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Pleasure can be supported by an illusion but happiness rests upon truth.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.
Nicolas Chamfort
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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.
Nicolas Chamfort