James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Chamfort
A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like a hack-horse setting out to gallop.
A man of intellect without energy added to it is a failure.
All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.
Calumny is like the wasp which worries you; which it were best not to try to get rid of, unless you are sure of slaying it, for otherwise it will return to the charge more furious than ever.
Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people whom we don’t know, and who don’t know us.
Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.
Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich.
Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but greedy of honour and feeding on selfishness.
Egotism is the tongue of vanity.
False modesty is the most decent of all falsehood.
Happiness is matter of opinion, of fancy, in fact, but it must amount to conviction, else it is nothing.
“I go at last out of this world, where the heart must either petrify or break.”At his last moments.
If you live among men, the heart must either break or turn to brass.
In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.
It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.
Knowledge is boundless; human capacity limited.
Le bonheur n’est pas chose aisée; il est trèsdifficile de le trouver en nous, et impossible de le trouver ailleurs—Happiness is no easy matter; it is very hard to find it within ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere.
Le hazard est un sobriquet de la Providence—Chance is a nickname for Providence.
Le public! combien faut-il de sots pour faire un public?—The public! How many fools must there be to make a public?
Love is more pleasing than marriage, because romances are more amusing than history.
Obscurity and Innocence, twin-sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armour in contact with the world.
Of all days, the one that is most wasted is that on which one has not laughed.
Peu de philosophie mène à méspriser l’érudition; beaucoup de philosophie mène à l’estimer—A little philosophy leads men to despise learning; a great deal leads them to esteem it.
Pleasure can be supported by illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
Pride adds to a man’s stature; vanity only puffs him out.
Pride is lofty, calm, immovable; vanity is uncertain, capricious, and unjust.
Pride is the source of a thousand virtues; vanity is that of nearly all vices and all perversities.
Real worth requires no interpreter; its everyday deeds form its blazonry.
Ruins are mile-stones on the road of time.
Secrecy is best taught by commencing with ourselves.
Society is composed of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Success makes success, as money makes money.
That man has advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.
The author is often obscure to readers because, as has been said, he proceeds from the thought to the expression, whereas they proceed from the expression to the thought.
The man of intellect is lost unless he unites energy of character to intellect. When we have the lantern of Diogenes we must have his staff.
The success of many works is found in the relation between the mediocrity of the author’s ideas and that of the ideas of the public.
There are more fools than wise men, and even in the wise men more folly than wisdom.
There are some trifles well habited, as there are some fools well clothed.
There is a kind of pride in which are included all the commandments of God, and a kind of vanity which contains the seven mortal sins.
Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society.
Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.
We gild our medicines with sweets; why not clothe truth and morals in pleasant garments as well?
Whoso is not a misanthropist at forty can never have loved his kind.
Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.