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Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited.

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
Limited
Capacity
Knowledge
Human
Humans
Boundless

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Where violence reigns, reason is weak.
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A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.
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Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
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Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.
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Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.
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To possess a good cognomen is a long way on the road of success in life.
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The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests-a gold mine.
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Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.
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Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.
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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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In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.
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He who leaves the game wins it.
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Men whose only concern is other people's opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to win the applause of people of poor taste some of them would be capable of good acting in front of a good audience. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery.
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The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
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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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The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
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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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The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society
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We must start human society from scratch as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.
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We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles.
Nicolas Chamfort