Quote

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

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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
Picks
Equator
Street
Ancients
Streets
Pirate
Beyond
Steal
Someone
Pockets
Play
Stealing
Corners
Pick
Moderns

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Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.
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Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.
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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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There aren't many benefactors who don't say, like Satan: All these things will I give you if you bow down and worship me.
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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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How many fools does it take to make up a public?
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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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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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Pleasure can be supported by an illusion but happiness rests upon truth.
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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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There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.
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Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.
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We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles.
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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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If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
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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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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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Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.
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Women of the world crave excitement.
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She commands who is blest with indifference.
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