Quotes/Maxims By Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort
I study only what I like; I occupy my mind only with the ideas that interest me. They may or may not prove useful, either to me or to others. Time either will or it will not bring about the circumstances that will lead me to a profitable employment of my acquisitions. In any case I will have had the inestimable advantage of not having been at odds with myself, and of having obeyed the promptings of my own mind and character.
What I have learned, I no longer know. The little that I still know, I have guessed.
One is frightened by violent points of view, but they are suited to strong souls, and vigorous characters find rest in extremes.
With the feelings, what can be evaluated is of no value.
Perhaps one has to have felt love in order really to know friendship.
The lover who is too much beloved by his mistress seems to love less, and vice versa. Can it be that the heart's feelings are like material benefits? When one can no longer hope to repay them, one sinks into ingratitude.
"Forgive them for they know not what they do," was the text the preacher took at the marriage of d'Aubigne, aged seventy, to a young lady of seventeen.
The woman who esteems herself more for the qualities of her soul or her mind than for her beauty is superior to her sex. She who esteems herself more for her beauty than for her mind or the qualities of her soul is typical of her sex. But she who esteems herself more for her birth or her rank than for her beauty is alien to her sex, and beneath it.
Poems | Phar Side