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False modesty is the most decent of all lies.

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
Modesty
Hypocrisy
Decent
False
Lies
Lying

More quotes by Nicolas Chamfort

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It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.
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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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We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
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Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.
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What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.
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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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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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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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Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
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Remorse turns us against ourselves.
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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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Change, change,--we all covet change.
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Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking.
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The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society
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Calumny is like the wasp which worries you, and which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever.
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Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
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To possess a good cognomen is a long way on the road of success in life.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Wicked people sometimes perform good actions. I suppose they wish to see if this gives as great a feeling of pleasure as the virtuous claim for it.
Nicolas Chamfort
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An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.
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Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.
Nicolas Chamfort