Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Quotes
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There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.
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I only study the things I like; I apply my mind only to matters that interest me. They'll be useful-or useless-to me or to others in due course, I'll be given-or not given-the opportunity of benefiting from what I've learned. In any case, I'll have enjoyed the inestimable advantage of doing things I like doing and following my own inclinations.
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Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.
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Tis easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.
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Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.
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In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.
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Calumny is like the wasp which worries you, and which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it; for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever.
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Satire is the disease of art.
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Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice.
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If taking vitamins doesn't keep you healthy enough, try more laughter: The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.
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He who leaves the game wins it.
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Narrow waists and narrow minds go together.
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There is a melancholy that stems from greatness
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Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.
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Prudence replaces strength by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.
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Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
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Men whose only concern is other people's opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to win the applause of people of poor taste; some of them would be capable of good acting in front of a good audience. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery.
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In a country where everyone strives for attention, it is better to be bankrupt than to be nothing.
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Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.
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Love is like epidemic diseases. The more one fears it the more likely one is to contract it.
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We must start human society from scratch; as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.
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Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
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Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
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The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.