Top 160 Nicolas Chamfort Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

2. “Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

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

— Nicolas Chamfort

4. “Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns among the stupid.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

5. “Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

6. “The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

7. “Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

8. “Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

9. “There is a melancholy that stems from greatness.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

10. “Knowledge is boundless, – human capacity, limited.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

11. “Success makes success, like money makes money.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

12. “Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

13. “A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

14. “Chance is a nickname for Providence.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

15. “Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

16. “Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

17. “Anticipation leads the way to victory, and is the spur to conquest.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

18. “The best philosophical attitude to adopt towards the world is a union of the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

19. “One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be idiocy because it has been able to appeal to the majority.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

20. “There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

21. “It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

22. “Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

23. “To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

24. “Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

25. “A modicum of discord is the very spice of courtship.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

26. “He who leaves the game wins it.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

27. “When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

28. “A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

29. “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.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

30. “Conviction is the conscience of intellect.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

31. “A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

32. “Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

33. “Be my brother or I will kill you.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

34. “Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians – lack of power to pronounce the syllable, “No.” To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one’s freedom and one’s character.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

35. “Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

36. “Love is like epidemic diseases. The more one fears it the more likely one is to contract it.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

37. “It is among uneducated women that we may look for the most confirmed gossips. Goethe tells us there is nothing more frightful than bustling ignorance.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

38. “If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

39. “Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

40. “Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

41. “Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?”

— Nicolas Chamfort

42. “There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

43. “All that I’ve learned, I’ve forgotten. The little that I still know, I’ve guessed.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

44. “Wicked people sometimes perform good actions. I suppose they wish to see if this gives as great a feeling of pleasure as the virtuous claim for it.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

45. “Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he’s always ready to escape their control.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

46. “Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

47. “Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

48. “Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but craving honor, and feeding on selfishness.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

49. “Marriage, as practised by high society, is arranged indecency.”

— Nicolas Chamfort

50. “People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.”

— Nicolas Chamfort