Quote

Egotism is the tongue of vanity.

Nicolas Chamfort

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Nicolas Chamfort
Age: 53 †
Born: 1741
Born: April 6
Died: 1794
Died: April 13
Journalist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Clarmont-Ferrand
Egotism
Vanity
Tongue

More quotes by Nicolas Chamfort

Image
Pleasure can be supported by an illusion but happiness rests upon truth.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
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.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
All passions exaggerate and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
We must start human society from scratch as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
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
Image
Secrecy is best taught by starting with ourselves.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
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.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
The best philosophical attitude to adopt towards the world is a union of the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice.
Nicolas Chamfort
Image
A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship.
Nicolas Chamfort