Sébastien-Roch Nicolas (Nicolas Chamfort) Quotes
Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. 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!
Quotes to Explore
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The long irons are the nemesis of the average golfer. I'm convinced that the underlying reason for this is that he keeps hearing how hard they are to handle. They're not that difficult, truly.
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What I want is for people to really grab hold of language and not be nervous about it. 'The Word Spy' is all about diving in and playing with words.
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The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.
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I don't like running when I'm holding things in my hand, whether it's a dog leash or a baby jogger. My mechanics get all messed up.
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Stereotypical vegetarian food looks gray and brown.
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In South Africa, I feel I am a stranger, at best an animal.
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Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.
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I had no real idea I was going to become a writer. It was just a game for me. I just liked pretending, daydreaming and imagining.
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I never thought about being famous.
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Angela Bassett is a friend of mine and someone who I truly admire tremendously in terms of her work and her choices.
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I have my cousin's jacket from when he was at war in Iraq. He never came home. It's incredible to have something that is so personal but that I also feel relatively comfortable wearing.
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Nobody reads the disclosures that roll down your computer screen. You click 'I agree' but you don't know what you're agreeing to.
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Christmas can have a real melancholy aspect, 'cause it packages itself as this idea of perfect family cohesion and love, and you're always going to come up short when you measure your personal life against the idealized personal lives that are constantly thrust in our faces, primarily by TV commercials.
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Can't step from one movie set to the next. Only Samuel L. Jackson can do that. All us mere mortals can't do that!
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When we lack the ability to talk back to entities that are culturally and politically powerful, the very foundations of free speech and democratic society are called into question.
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Like those itinerant clerics who traveled during the summer months and took over for vacationing priests, I hope to help out this summer in Provincetown, but without the pedophilia.
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The wages Haiti requires by law belong in the department of science fiction: actual wages on coffee plantations vary from $.07 to $.15 a day
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Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.
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If it's just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn't much of a picture book, is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself.
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I was on the road with Jerry Lee Lewis when I was 15 - I can't imagine not doing it. That's what I do.
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Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.
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I know London very well.
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I love the story of the guy coming to Nashville and then kind of getting set down and told, 'This is how the town works,' which, I've totally been there. But the coolest thing about 'Out of Style' is it's a song within a song.
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Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. 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!
