Nicola - Sebastien de Chamfort

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Quotes

• Without women, the beginning of our lives would be deprived of support, the middle - of pleasure and the end - of consolation.
• Education should be based on two foundations - morality and prudence: the first supports virtue, the second protects from other people's vices. Listening to someone else's secret is like taking a thing as a mortgage.
• A feeling that has a price is worthless.
• There are people who need to excel at all costs: in the theater, on the throne, on the scaffold, they will always feel good if only they attract attention to themselves.
• Women give to friendship only what they borrow from love.
• Both marriage and celibacy have their drawbacks: of these two states, the one that can still be corrected is preferable.
• When a woman chooses a lover, it is not as important to her whether she likes him as whether other women like him. Any passion always exaggerates everything, otherwise it would not be a passion.
• Love is the only feeling in which everything is true and everything is false.
• Love is like a sticky disease: the more you are afraid of it, the sooner you will catch it.
• An outfit is a preface to a woman, and sometimes the entire book. An ardent and tender friendship can be wounded even by a rose petal.
• Too high qualities make a person less suitable for society.
• People go to the market not with large bars of gold, but with silver and copper.
• Spouses can be happy only if they are connected by mutual love or at least match each other with their shortcomings.
• What is a philosopher? This is a person who contrasts nature with laws, reason with customs, conscience with generally accepted views, and his own opinion with prejudices.
• To fully appreciate friendship, you must first experience love.
• For a relationship between a man and a woman to be truly exciting, they must be connected by pleasure, memory or desire.
• A person without firm rules almost always lacks character: if he had character, he would feel how much he needs rules.
• A person who seems to express his thoughts clearly is not always intelligible to others, because he goes from thoughts to words, and the listener goes from words to thoughts. Pride seems to add to people's stature, vanity only inflates them.
• If the Lord does not send a second global flood upon us, it is only because the first did not bring results.
• Finding happiness in yourself is difficult, but finding happiness anywhere else is impossible. With happiness, the situation is the same as with a watch: the simpler the mechanism, the less often it deteriorates.
• A person remains a beginner all his life.
• We are happier in solitude than in society. And is it not because when we are alone we think about inanimate objects, but among people we think about people?
• Anyone who strives to become a philosopher should not be afraid of the first sad discoveries on the path to understanding people. To comprehend a person to the end, we need to overcome the hostility that he evokes in us: you cannot become a skilled anatomist until you learn to look
• They sometimes say about people who live alone: ​​“They don’t like society.” In many cases, this is the same as saying about someone: “He doesn’t like to walk” on the sole grounds that the person is not inclined to wander around robber dens at night.
• No matter how the corporation (parliamentary, academy, assembly) discredits itself, it is useless to enter into a fight with it: it will survive thanks to its large numbers. Shame and ridicule only slide over her. like bullets on a wild boar or a crocodile. Anyone who wants to be liked in the world must come to terms with the fact that they will be taught long-known things by people who have no idea about them.
• Sometimes it seems to me that those who make up secular society secretly know their true worth.
• I have noticed more than once that they respect people who do not take this society into account at all.
• Often, in order to gain the opinion of the world, you only need to deeply despise it, and, moreover, despise it openly, sincerely, straightforwardly, without pretense or bragging.
• A philosopher is a person who knows the value of everyone: is it any wonder that no one likes his judgments?
• Our reason sometimes brings us no less grief than our passions.
• Recognition is more valuable than fame, respect is more valuable than reputation, honor is more valuable than fame.
• Fame is the pleasure of being known to those who do not know you.
• Conviction is the conscience of the mind.
• Excessive claims are the source of our sorrows, and we receive happiness in life only when it dries up. To smash vices and spare the vicious is the same as condemning cards and defending the game of cards.
• First you need to be fair, and only then generous; first you need to get shirts, and only then lace.
• The contemplative life is often very bleak.
• You need to act more, think less and not be an outside witness to your own life.
• People who do not adjust to anything, live as their heart tells them, act according to their rules and feelings - these are the people I have almost never met. Of all that has been said about marriage and celibacy, the most reasonable and fair is the following remark: “Whichever of the two you don’t choose, you will still regret it.”
• Generosity is nothing more than the compassion of a noble heart.
• Comprehending the evil inherent in nature, you are filled with contempt for death; By comprehending the vices of society, you learn to despise life.
• In nature, every phenomenon is a tangled ball; in society, every person is a pebble in a mosaic pattern. Both in the physical world and in the spiritual world everything is intertwined, there is nothing pure, nothing separate.
• Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more entertaining than historical works.
• Feeling awakens thought in us - everyone agrees with this; but not everyone will agree that thought awakens feeling, but this is no less correct
• A person is often left alone with himself, and then he needs virtue; sometimes he is in the company of other people, and then he needs a good name.
• Only a reasonable marriage is successful, only a reckless one is exciting. Any other is built on base calculations. Let's face it, only those who have completely killed some aspects of their soul live happily in the world. Public opinion is a court of such a kind that it is not appropriate for a decent person to either blindly believe its verdicts or irrevocably reject them.
• Sometimes it is enough not to come to terms with arrogance and conceit in order to turn them into nothing; sometimes it is enough not to notice them for them to become harmless.
• If I manage to do a good deed and it becomes known, I feel not rewarded, but punished
• It is a great misfortune to lose, due to the qualities of your character, the place in society to which you are entitled due to your talents.
• It is not appropriate for a decent person to pursue universal respect: let it come to him by itself and, so to speak, against his will
• Whenever I see women, and even men, blindly infatuated with someone, I stop believing in their ability to feel deeply. This rule has never deceived me yet. The ministers lost the prestige of royal power, the priests lost the prestige of religion. God and the king pay for the stupidity of their lackeys.
• It's better to be bankrupt than to be nobody.
• I have three kinds of friends: friends who love me, friends who don't care about me at all, and friends who can't stand me.
• Enjoy and give pleasure, without causing harm to yourself or others - this, in my opinion, is the essence of morality.
• Success begets success, just as money leads to money.
• The art of succeeding and making women dizzy comes down to the ability to be bored.
• Thought heals everything. If she causes pain, ask her for a cure for that pain, and she will give it to you. Anyone who loves nature is considered overly enthusiastic.
• If you seek favor from a minister, approach him with a sad look: people do not like those who are happier than them.
• Those who fail to gain respect for themselves can only make a career and surround themselves with all sorts of bastards.
• No matter how badly men think about women, every woman thinks even worse about them.
• The poor are the blacks of Europe.
• “Only the heirs pay generously,” said one doctor. Peace to the huts, war to the palaces.
• The richest person is the thrifty one, the poorest person is the miser.
• Marriage is too perfect a state for an imperfect person.
• Marriage follows love, just like smoke follows fire. In serious matters people show themselves as they should appear; in the little things - as they are. A person in love always tries to surpass himself in pleasantness, which is why lovers are for the most part so funny.
• Slander is like a pesky wasp: if you are not sure that you will kill it right there on the spot, then do not try to drive it away, otherwise it will attack you again with even greater fury.
• Anyone who doesn’t want to be a buffoon should avoid the stage: once you climb on it, you can’t help but be a buffoon, otherwise the audience will throw stones at you.
• Those who are not sharp enough in mind to laugh it off in time are often forced to either lie or indulge in the most boring reasoning. Not a pleasant choice! Courtesy and cheerfulness usually help a decent person avoid it.
• He who convinces too hard will not convince anyone. Any passion always exaggerates everything, otherwise it would not be a passion.
• People pervert their soul, conscience, and mind in the same way as they spoil their stomach.
• The silence of a man known for his eloquence inspires much more respect than the chatter of an ordinary talker. Our reason sometimes brings us no less grief than our passions.
• You need to ridicule and joke in such a way that the person ridiculed cannot get angry; otherwise, consider the joke a failure.
• Rogues always try to appear at least partially honest people.
• We truly know only those whom we have studied well; there are very few people worthy of study. It follows from this that a truly outstanding person should not, in general, strive to be recognized. He understands that only a few can appreciate him and that each of these few has their own passions, pride, and calculations that prevent them from paying as much attention to his talents as they deserve.
• With happiness, the situation is like with a watch: the simpler the mechanism, the less often it deteriorates.
• The contemplative life is very joyless. We need to take more action.
• Happiness is not an easy thing: it is difficult to find within yourself and it is not easy to find outside of yourself.
• Three-quarters of crazy things turn out to be just stupid things.
• Good taste, tact and good manners are much more closely related to each other than one would like to think. Tact is good taste in behavior and demeanor, and good manners is good taste in conversation and speech.
• Ambition ignites base souls much more easily than exalted ones: a sweep of straw or a hut catches fire faster than a palace.
• So that life does not seem unbearable, you need to accustom yourself to two things: to the wounds that time inflicts, and to the injustices that people cause.
• The joke is intended to punish any vices of man and society; it protects us from shameful acts, helps us put everyone in their place and not sacrifice our own.

Biography

French writer, thinker, moralist. An illegitimate child, he was raised by foster parents - grocer Francois Nicolas and his wife Therese Croizet. Graduated from the University of Paris. He wrote poetry and comedies, made a living from literary sources, and was a well-known figure in Parisian salons. In 1781 he became a member of the French Academy. He welcomed the Great French Revolution and took part in the storming of the Bastille. In 1790-1791 he was secretary of the Jacobin Club. He was friends with Mirabeau, wrote texts for public speeches for him. In 1792 he was appointed director of the National Library. In 1793 he was arrested following a denunciation for his opposition to terror, and released a few days later. Faced with the threat of a new arrest, he tried to commit suicide; doctors saved him, but a few months later he died from self-inflicted wounds. Chamfort's poems and dramatic works are practically forgotten today. He remained in history with a book of observations and aphorisms, “Maxims and Thoughts, Characters and Anecdotes,” published after his death by one of his friends (1795). Deeply influenced subsequent European and American aphorism from Ambrose Bierce and Nietzsche to Cioran and Nicholas Gomez Davila.

More about the name Sevastyan

Works[edit]

• Praise of Molière, Crowned (1769)
• Fountain of Praise (1774)
• The Young Indian (1764); La Jeune Indienne: Comédie en Un Acte Et en Vers
  . Princeton University Press. 1945
• Smith Merchant, comedy
• Mustafa and Zeangir are a tragedy. [2]

Collected works

• Pierre Louis GINGEN, 1795, 4 vols.
• Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1968). PR Auguis (ed.). Perfect works of Chamfort
  . Slatkine. (original edition of Augustus, 1824, 5 vols.)
• Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1969). Products of a Perfect Civilization: Selected Writings of Chamfort
  . Translator William Stanley Merwin. McMillan.
• Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1812). Perfect Works of Chamfort, French Academy
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  1
  (3rd ed.). Maradan.
• Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1812). Perfect Works of Chamfort, French Academy
  .
  2
  (3rd ed.). Maradan.
• Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1824). Pierre-René Auguy (ed.). Chamfort's perfect works: recueillies et publiées avec une note Historique sur la vie et les écrits de l'auteur
  .
  1
  . Chaumerot Jeune.
• Pierre-René Hauguy, ed. (1824). Perfect works of Chamfort
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  4
  . Chaumerot Jeune.
• Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1824). Pierre-René Auguy (ed.). Perfect works of Chamfort, French Academy
  .
  5
  . Maradan.

Writings [edit]

Chamfort's works include comedies, political writing, literary criticism, portraits, letters, and poetry. His Maximes et Pensées

, highly praised by John Stuart Mill, after the works of La Rochefoucauld, are among the most striking and promising statements of the modern era.
His aphorisms, less systematic and psychologically less important than those of La Rochefoucauld, are as significant in their cruelty and the iconoclastic spirit of the period of storm and preparation that gave rise to them, just as the reflections
in their exquisite restraint and carefully considered subtlety, are characteristic of calm.
the elegance of its era. In addition, they have a richness of color, picturesqueness of phrases, passion and boldness. Sainte-Beuve compares them to well-minted coins that retain their value, and to sharp arrows that arrive for an encore
. Although Antoine de Rivarol's maxims are directly opposite the political spectrum (see French Revolution), they are among those easily comparable in acidity and brightness.

External links [edit]

• Works by or about Nicolas Chamfort at Internet Archive
• frenchphilosophes.weebly.com