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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
Humans
Boundless
Limited
Capacity
Knowledge
Human

More quotes by Nicolas Chamfort

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It is said of a lonely man that he does not appreciate the life of society. This is like saying he hates hiking because he dislikes walking in thick forest on a dark night.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.
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.
Nicolas Chamfort
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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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If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.
Nicolas Chamfort
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In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.
Nicolas Chamfort
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If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
Nicolas Chamfort
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There is as much expression in the feet as in the hands.
Nicolas Chamfort
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The new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natrual teeth and legs of flesh and bone.
Nicolas Chamfort
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False modesty is the most decent of all lies.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.
Nicolas Chamfort
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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.
Nicolas Chamfort
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In love, everything is true, everything is false it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.
Nicolas Chamfort
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The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
Nicolas Chamfort
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There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.
Nicolas Chamfort
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Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours it is a palliation death is the remedy.
Nicolas Chamfort
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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.
Nicolas Chamfort