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date: 16 May 2025

Nicolas-Sébastien Chamfort 1741–94
French writer 

  1. Of all days, the one most surely wasted is the one on which one has not laughed.
    Maximes et Pensées (1796) ch. 1
  2. Qualities too elevated often unfit a man for society. We don't take ingots with us to market; we take silver or small change.
    Maximes et Pensées (1796) ch. 3
  3. A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.
    Maximes et Pensées (1796) ch.7
  4. The poor are Europe's blacks.
    Maximes et Pensées (1796) ch. 8
  5. Sois mon frère, ou je te tue.
    Be my brother, or I kill you.
    his interpretation of ‘Fraternité ou la mort [Fraternity or death]’; see Anonymous
    P. R. Anguis (ed.) Oeuvres Complètes (1824) vol. 1 ‘Notice Historique sur la Vie et les Écrits de Chamfort’