Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Quotes
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The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.
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There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.
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The poor are the blacks of Europe.
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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.
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Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
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It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world.
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Were a man to consult only his reason, who would marry? For myself, I wouldn't marry, for fear of having a son who resembled me.
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Sometimes apparent resemblance of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact.
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Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
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The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
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Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.
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There some trifles well habited, as there are some fools well clothed.
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Bachelors' wives and old maids' children are always perfect.
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Someone has said that to plagiarise from the ancients is to play the pirate beyond the Equator, but that to steal from the moderns is to pick pockets at street corners.
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At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.
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Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians -- lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character.
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One must not hope to be more than one can be.
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We gild our medicines with sweets; why not clothe truth and morals in peasant garments as well?
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All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.
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It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.
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Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
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A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure.
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Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours; it is a palliation; death is the remedy.
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The great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.