Chamfort Quotes (18 Quotes)

If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet

Passions make men live, knowledge merely makes them last

Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.

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

No law reaches it, but all right-minded people observe it

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.

Paris, a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four-fifths of the inhabitants die of grief. About Paris

Most books today seem to have been written overnight from books read that day

I would say of metaphysicians what Scaliger said of the Basques they are said to understand each other, but I do not believe it

Love is the exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two skins.

Change in fashion is the tax which the industry of the poor levies on the vanity of the rich

Someone said of a very great egotist He would burn your house down to cook himself a couple of eggs.'

Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.

At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.

It is easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate

Love, in present-day society, is just the exchange of two imaginary pictures, and the contact of one epidermis with another.

Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn.

In love, everything is true, everything is false it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity