1741-1794, French Writer, Journalist, Playwright
A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Ideas]
A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Intelligence and Intellectuals]
All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Passion]
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.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Writers and Writing]
Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Fame]
Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Fashion]
Conviction is the conscience of the mind.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Mind]
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.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Education]
Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Respectability]
How many fools does it take to make up a public?
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Fools and Foolishness]
I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Friends and Friendship]
If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Nations]
It is commonly supposed that the art of pleasing is a wonderful aid in the pursuit of fortune; but the art of being bored is infinitely more successful.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Getting Ahead]
Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Life and Death]
Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Experience]
Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Books and Reading]
Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Independence]
No law reaches it, but all right-minded people observe it.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Decency]
Paris, a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four-fifths of the inhabitants die of grief. [About Paris]
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Cities and City Life]
People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort – [Reason]