Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort

“ By learning the evil elements in nature we despise death, by learning those of society we despise life.
Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.
[Pg 33]
“In the world,” remarked some one to me, “you have three kinds of friends: the friends who love you, the friends who do not trouble their heads about you, and the friends who hate you.”
It must be admitted that in order to live happy in the world there are sides to the soul which we must absolutely paralyse.
Man under present social conditions seems to me corrupted more by his reason than by his passions. ”

“ One might say the same to those who adopt principles stronger than their character will bear. “Are you not ashamed of wishing to be more of a philosopher than you can be?”
In great actions men show themselves as they ought to be, in small actions as they are.
Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is. ”

“ A man in love who pities the reasonable man seems to me like one who reads fairy tales and jeers at those who read history.
Love resembles epidemic diseases: the more one fears them, the more liable is one to infection.
In witnessing or experiencing the pains inseparable from intense feeling in love and friendship, be it by the death of the loved person or by the accidents of life, one is tempted to believe that dissipation and frivolity are not such great follies after all, and that life is scarce worth more than what fashionable folk make of it. ”

“ It has been observed that writers on physics, natural history, physiology, and chemistry, are, as a rule, men of mild, equable temperament and happy; whilst, on the contrary, writers on politics, law, and even ethics, are of a sad and melancholy cast of mind. Nothing can be more simple: the former study nature, the latter society, the former contemplate the work of the supreme Being, the latter confine their gaze to the work of men. ”

“ The intelligence is often to the heart what the library of a mansion is to the person of its master.
A bad man will occasionally do a good action. One might say that he wishes to see whether it gives as much pleasure as honest folk assert.
Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence. Vice would not be absolute vice did it not hate virtue.
One suspects the idleness of a knave and the silence of a fool.
Generosity is the pitifulness of noble hearts.
All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions. ”

“ Our reason sometimes makes us as unhappy as our passions, and in such a case one can say of a man that he is a patient poisoned by his physician.
It is nature’s will that wise men have their illusions as well as fools, to the end that they be not made too unhappy by their own wisdom.
That tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Bible is a fine allegory. Is it not intended to signify that when one has penetrated to the depths of things, the consequent loss of illusions brings about the death of the soul—that is to say a complete detachment from all that moves and interests other men? ”

“ When princes condescend to emerge from their miserable systems of etiquette it is never in favour of a man of merit, but of a wench or a buffoon. When women forget themselves it is never for love of an honest man but of a rascal. In short when people break the yoke of public opinion, it is rarely to rise above it, nearly always to descend below it. ”

“ We must needs have the power of uniting contrarieties: love of virtue with indifference to public opinion, taste for work with indifference to glory, attention to health with indifference to life.
There are few vices that prevent a man from having many friends so much as his too high qualities prevent him.
Vanity is often the motive that forces a man to summon up all the energy of his soul. ”

“ Education must have two foundations—morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defence 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. The one great social principle is to be just both to yourself and to others. If you must love [Pg 21] your neighbour as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbour. ”

“ Often in early youth an opinion or custom seems absurd to us, which, with advancing years, we discover has some justification and so appears less absurd. Ought we to conclude from this that certain customs are not so ridiculous as others? One might sometimes be tempted to think that they were established by people who had read the book of life through, and that they are judged by those who, despite their intelligence, have only glanced at a few pages. ”

“ The majority of our social institutions seem to have as object the maintenance of man in a mediocrity of ideas and emotions, which renders him best fitted to govern or be governed.
There is no man who can be by himself alone so contemptible as a body of men, and there is no body of men that can be so contemptible as the public at large.
It may be argued that every public idea, every accepted convention, is a piece of stupidity, for has it not commended itself to the greatest number? ”

“ To turn a widow from the idea of marrying again, one of her friends remarked to her: “Don’t you see that it is a very fine thing to bear the name of a man who can no longer make a fool of himself?”
The sincerest of affections lays the soul open to petty passions. Marriage makes your soul liable to your wife’s petty passions; also, ambition, vanity, and the like. ”

“ Will it be believed that despotism has its partizans on the ground of the necessity for encouraging the fine arts? The brilliancy of the reign of Louis XIV. has to an incredible extent multiplied the number of those who think thus. According to them the crowning glory of all human society is to have fine tragedies, fine comedies and other works of art. There are those who willingly forgive all the evil wrought by priests, since without the priests we should not have had the comedy of Tartuffe. ”

“ When I hear it argued that, taking everything into account, the least sensitive folk are the happiest, I remember the Indian proverb: “Better to be seated than standing, better to be lying than seated, but better than all else to be dead.”
Living is a disease from the pains of which sleep eases us every sixteen hours; sleep is but a palliative, death alone is the cure. ”

“ It is unfortunate for men, fortunate perhaps for tyrants, that the poor and unhappy have not the instinct or pride of the elephant which does not reproduce itself in servitude.
There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes. ”

“ To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later—this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity! ”

“ There is a wide-spread belief that the art of pleasing is a valuable means of making one’s fortune. But to know how to be bored is an art which gives far better results; indeed talent for making a fortune like that for succeeding with women, can almost be reduced to that art.
[Pg 35]
The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little. ”

“ Had any one told Adam, on the day following the death of Abel, that some centuries later there would be places where, in an enclosure of twelve square miles, seven or eight hundred thousand people would be concentrated, piled one upon another, do you imagine he would have believed it possible that such multitudes could ever live together? ”

“ A man who professed to esteem women highly was asked if he had enjoyed the favours of many. “Not so many as if I had despised them,” he said.
Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
Young women have a misfortune which they share with kings, that of having no friends; but happily they feel this misfortune as little as the kings: the latter’s pomp and the former’s vanity spare both that emotion.
Madame De Montmorin said to her son: “You are going into society: I have only one [Pg 48] piece of advice to give you, and that is to be in love with all the women.” ”

“ An interesting work might be compiled which would point out all the noxious ideas concerning the human spirit, society and morality, to be found argued or implicit in the most celebrated writings and the most highly revered authors; ideas which propagate religious superstition, evil political principles, despotism, class pride and popular prejudices of every kind. Such a [Pg 39] work would demonstrate that nearly all books corrupt, and that the best do almost as much harm as good. ”

“ The majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.
There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
It is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile. ”

“ Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
Love gives greater pleasure than marriage for the same reason that romances are more amusing than history.
[Pg 52]
One of the best reasons you can have for never marrying is not so much that you are the woman’s dupe as that she is not yours.
Both marriage and celibacy have their respective drawbacks: we shall be wise if we make choice of that which is not irremediable.
For thirty years a certain man went to spend every evening with Mme. ——. When his wife died his friends believed he would marry the other, and urged him to do so. ”

“ Physical scourges and the calamities of human nature rendered society necessary. Society has added to natural misfortunes. The drawbacks of society have made government necessary, and government adds to society’s [Pg 40] misfortunes. There is the history of human nature in a nutshell. ”

“ One must make choice between loving women and knowing them; there is no middle course.
Naturalists tell us that in all animal species degeneration begins in the female. In civilised society philosophers can apply this observation to morals.
[Pg 47]
Apparently nature, in giving man an absolutely irradicable taste for women, must have foreseen that, without this precaution, the contempt inspired by the vices of their sex, vanity in particular, would be a great obstacle to the maintenance and propagation of the human species. ”

“ An empty headed fellow who has a passing flash of wit astonishes and scandalises one as does a cab horse at a gallop.
I should advise any one who wishes to obtain a favour of a minister to accost him with an air of melancholy rather than one of gaiety. We do not like to see others happier than ourselves. ”

“ A man who is not only honest but wise owes it to himself to add to the prudence that satisfies his conscience, the prudence that foresees and disarms calumny.
I cannot conceive of a wisdom that lacks distrust: according to the Scriptures the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God—I believe it is rather the fear of men. ”

“ One of the great misfortunes of man is that even his good qualities are sometimes useless to him, and that the art of profiting by them and governing them wisely is often the tardy fruit of experience alone. ”

“ It must be admitted that to live in the world without from time to time acting a part is impossible. What distinguishes the honest man from the knave is, that the former only does so when absolutely obliged and to escape a danger, while the latter seeks for opportunities. ”

“ The first know nothing of the palace, the pig-sties of which are all that they have seen; the second are enthusiasts, who turn their eyes far from all that offends them, but that, none the less, exists. ”

“ He is far advanced in the study of morals who can lay his finger on all the points that distinguish pride from vanity. The first is lofty, calm, dignified, imperturbable, resolute; the second mean, inconstant, easily swayed, restless, unsteady. One raises a man, the other puffs him up. The first is source of a thousand virtues, the second that of nearly all vices and all caprices. There is a kind of pride in which [Pg 25] are comprised all the commandments of God, a kind of vanity that embodies the seven deadly sins. ”

“ Men’s ideas are like cards and other games. Ideas which I remember to have seen regarded as dangerous and over-bold have since become commonplace and almost trite, and have descended to men little worthy of them. ”

“ Time diminishes for us the intensity of absolute pleasures, to use the metaphysician’s term, but apparently it increases relative pleasures; and I suspect that this is the artifice by which nature is able to attach men to life after the loss of the objects or pleasures which most rendered it agreeable. ”

“ The physical world appears the work of a good and mighty Being who has had to abandon the execution of part of his plan to a maleficent Being. But the moral world seems rather the production of a crazy fiend’s caprices. ”

“ There are two classes of moralists and political writers; those who have only seen human nature on its detestable or absurd side, and they form the greater number: Lucian, Montaigne, Labruyère, Larochefoucauld, Swift, Mandeville, Helvetius, &c. ”

“ There are certain failings that preserve one from some epidemic vices, just as it may be noted that in time of plague fever-stricken patients escape contagion.
The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out. ”