Sébastien-Roch Nicolas (Nicolas Chamfort) Quotes
The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
Quotes to Explore
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We are a pluralist civilisation because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into prison in Kabul. If we did so, we, too, would become Taliban.
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My job is quite suitable for full-time mothering.
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A girl’s got to use what she’s given and I’m not going to make a guy drool the way a Britney video does. So I take it to extremes. I don’t say I dress sexily on stage - what I do is so extreme. It’s meant to make guys think: ‘I don’t know if this is sexy or just weird.
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In a big Bollywood romantic film, taking my shirt off and spreading the hand towards the mountain with dancers behind me are not my cup of tea.
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Sometimes the image of the intellectual boxer did for me more harm than good. If a boxer has a reputation as an intellectual, some people no longer respect him as a fighter. With me it was always Lennox should react, not think. But thats nonsense. Only the guy who controls his opponent wins.
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Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitement's of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.
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I absolutely cannot see how one can later make up for having failed to go to a good school at the proper time. For this is what distinguishes the hard school as a good school from all others: that much is demanded; and sternly demanded; that the good, even the exceptional, is demanded as the norm; that praise is rare, that indulgence is nonexistent; that blame is apportioned sharply, objectively, without regard for talent or antecedents. What does one learn in a hard school? Obeying and commanding.
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Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks
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The world is a mirror representing the divine life.
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Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.
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The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.
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'E's all'ot sand an' ginger when alive, An''e's generally shammin' when'e's dead.
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I was lucky in that when the opportunity came, I was prepared to meet it.
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The Internet contains everything in the whole wide world ever. I don’t know about you, but I find everything in the whole wide world ever to be a bit distracting.
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Anybody that wants to walk out that door and leave home for a few months and rely on themselves instead of fate might have some interesting stories to tell.
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Even if we do not always agree on every aspect, nobody should take this as an excuse to declare us as enemies.
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Just as the ability to devise simple but evocative models is the signature of the great scientist so overelaboration and overparameterization is often the mark of mediocrity.
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The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
