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Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.

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
Believe
Really
Make
Foolish
World
Mistakes
People
Intelligent
Mistake
Cannot
Many

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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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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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We must start human society from scratch as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.
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Women of the world crave excitement.
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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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There is as much expression in the feet as in the hands.
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The majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.
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The contact of two epidermises.
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Wrinkles and ill-nature together made a woman hideous.
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And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead (suicide note)
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Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.
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A man without nobility cannot have kindliness he can only have good nature.
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Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.
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We gild our medicines with sweets why not clothe truth and morals in peasant garments as well?
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Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.
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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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Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.
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Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
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If it wasn't for me, I'd do brilliantly.
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Though we best know and cannot deny our imperfections, it is not for us to lose our self-reliance and true manhood.
Nicolas Chamfort