Nicolas Chamfort / 1741–1794 / France / Dramatist, Poet, Essayist, Critic, Aphorist
Note: All quotations are taken from Maximes et pensées [Maxims and Thoughts] (first published posthumously in 1796).
Common Decency
A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery.
Contemplation
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
Happiness
Pleasure can be supported by an illusion, but happiness rests upon truth.
Last Words
And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead.
Laughter
The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.
Life
In order not to find life unbearable, you must accept two things: the ravages of time and the injustices of man.
Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It’s a palliative. The remedy is death.
Love
There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.
Misanthropy
Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
Opposing Virtues
We ought to be able to combine opposites: the love of goodness with indifference to other people’s opinions, a liking for work with indifference to fame, concern for our health with indifference to life.
Passion
It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.
Public Opinion
Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be an idiocy, because it has been able to appeal to a majority.
Society
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..
When you want to be well-liked in the world, you have to let a lot of people teach you things that you know and they don’t.
M. de Lassay, a very mild-mannered man, but with a great knowledge of society, used to say that we should swallow a toad every morning to avoid being disgusted for the rest of the day, when we have to spend it in society.
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Joseph Joubert / 1754–1824 / France / Essayist, Memoirist, Aphorist
Note: All quotations are taken from Pensées [Thoughts] (posthumously published in 1838).
Ambition
When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.
Art and Speech
Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.
Children
Children need models rather than critics.
Discussion
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
Imagination
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
Kindness
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
Learning
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
Life
How many people eat, drink, and get married; buy, sell, and build; make contracts and attend to their fortune; have friends and enemies, pleasures and pains, are born, grow up, live and die—but asleep!
Misery
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
Poetry
You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.
Teaching
To teach is to learn twice.
Truth
What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.
Worries
Our worries always come from our weaknesses.
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François de La Rochefoucauld / 1613–1680 / France / Memoirist, Aphorist
Note: All quotations are taken from Maximes [Maxims] (1665; many later editions).
Advice
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.
Bores
We frequently forgive those who bore us, but cannot forgive those whom we bore.
Courage
We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
Death
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.
Evil
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
Faults
If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.
We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great one.
Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
Fortune and Misfortune
We need greater virtues to sustain good fortune than bad.
In the misfortune of our best friends we often find something that is not displeasing.
Good Sense
We rarely find that people have good sense unless they agree with us.
Gratitude
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
Happiness
We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.
Love
There is no disguise which can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
The pleasure of love is in loving. We are happier in the passion we feel than in that we arouse.
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles
and fans fire.
We pardon to the extent that we love.
Passions
If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.
The mind is always the dupe of the heart.
Philosophy
Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.
Quarrels
Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
Self-Regard
We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.
Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.
Understanding
Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
Wisdom
The constancy of the wise is the art to contain their excitement in the heart.
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Antoine de Rivarol /1753–1801 / France / Poet, Essayist, Political Commentator, Journalist, Translator, Aphorist
Note: All quotations are taken from Pensées inédites [Unpublished Thoughts] (first published posthumously in 1808).
Heart and Mind
Mind is the partial side of men; the heart is everything.
Ideas
Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.
Life
Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.
Love
The world is governed by love,—self-love.
Modesty
The modest man has everything to gain, and the arrogant man everything to lose; for modesty has always to deal with generosity, and arrogance with envy.
Philosophers
It is easy for men to write and talk like philosophers, but to act with wisdom, there is the rub!
Pity
In general, indulgence for those we know is rarer than pity for those we know not
Silence
Silence never yet betrayed any one!
Society
Of every ten persons who talk about you, nine will say something bad, and the tenth will say something good in a bad way.
Solitude
That which happens to the soil when it ceases to be cultivated by the social man happens to man himself when he foolishly forsakes society for solitude; the brambles grow up in his desert heart.
Thought and Speech
Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.
Time
Opinions, theories, and systems pass by turns over the grindstone of time, which at first gives them brilliancy and sharpness, but finally wears them out.
Wealth
If poverty makes man groan, he yawns in opulence. When fortune exempts us from labor, nature overwhelms us with time.
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Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues / 1715–1747 / France / Aphorist
Note: All quotations are taken from Réflexions et maximes [Reflections and Maxims] (1746).
Achievement
To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.
Belief
As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.
Beneficence
Give help rather than advice.
Deception
A liar is a man who does now know how to deceive, a flatterer one who only deceives fools.
Emotion and Reason
Emotions have taught mankind to reason.
Fairness
All that is unfair, offends us if it’s not beneficial for us.
Faith
Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy.
Hope
More are taken in by hope than by cunning.
Indolence
Indolence is the sleep of the mind.
Intelligent Design
As a house implies a builder, and a garment a weaver, and a door a carpenter, so does the existence of the Universe imply a Creator.
Knowledge
The things we know best are the things we haven’t been taught.
Mankind
We should expect the best and the worst from mankind as from the weather.
It is not in everyone’s power to secure wealth, office, or honors; but everyone may be good, generous, and wise.
Morality
Our errors and our controversies, in the sphere of morality, arise sometimes from looking on men as though they could be altogether bad, or altogether good.
Necessity
Necessity delivers us from the embarrassment of choice.
Patience
Patience is the art of hoping.
Pleasing Others
The art of pleasing is the art of deception.
Self-Knowledge
We discover in ourselves what others hide from us and we recognize in others what we hide from ourselves.
Servitude
Servitude degrades people to such a point that they come to like it.