Some thoughts of Chomfort

To despise money is to dethrone a king.

The beginning of wisdom is the fear of man.

The world either breaks or hardens the heart.

He who has no character is not a man-he is a thing.

Love-agreeable foolery: ambition-serious stupidity.

The loves of some peoples are but the result of good suppers.

Prejudice, vanity, calculation; these are what govern the world.

The public! the public! How many fools does it take to make a public?

In politics and in gallantry really wise men do not fight for conquests.

Enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to thyself or to others;
this is true morality.

Intelligent people make many blunders because they never be­ lieve the world as stupid as it is. 

Love pleases more than marriage for the reason that romance is more interesting than history.

You run the risk of being disgusted if you pry into the processes of cookery, government, or justice.

A man in deep mourning is asked: "Good God! whom have you lost?" "I?" says he, "I have lost nothing, I am a widower."

We have three kinds of friends; those who love us, those who are indifferent to us and those who hate us.

The best philosophy to employ towards the world is to alloy the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.

In love all is true and all is false. It is the only thing on which you cannot possibly say an absurdity. 

The ambitious one who failed in his aim and lives in despair re­ minds me of Ixion broken on the wheel for having embraced a cloud.

An Englishman condemned to be hanged received the King's pardon. "The law's on my side," he protested, "they shall hang !" me.

Our happiness depends upon a multitude of circumstances which do not manifest themselves, which one does not, and can not speak of.

We may wager that any idea of the public, or any general opin­ ion, is a folly since it has received the approbation of a majority of the people.

"The difference between you and me," said a philosopher, "is that you say to masked hypocrites 'I know you' while I leave them to think that they have deceived me."

Someone asked a child "Is God the Father, God?" "Yes."-"And God the Son, is He God?" "Not yet, that I know of; but on the death of His father He cannot fail to come into the succession."

Mr. L. to turn Mrs. B. (for long a widow) from the idea of mar­rying, said to her "Don't you see, it's a grand thing to bear the name of a man who can commit no more stupidities."

Hope is but a quack who cheats us continually and I for one felt happy when I had lost my hopes.

I should put on the gates of Paradise the words which Dante put over the entrance to Hell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

The physical world appears to be the work of a powerful and good being, who has been obliged to leave the execution of a part of his scheme to a demon; but the moral world seems to be the product of the whims of a demon gone mad.

Milton after the restoration of Charles II was on the way to se­ curing again a lucrative office which he had lost. His wife urged him. He replied: "You are a woman, and you want a coach; as for me, I want to live and die an honest man."

Someone told M. "You are very fond of consideration." He re­ plied in a way that struck me: "No, I have consideration for my­ self and that sometimes secures me the consideration of others."

A bright woman told me once that when choosing a sweetheart a woman pays more regard to what other women say about the man of her choice than to her own opinion of him.

One must be able to combine the contraries: love of virtue with indifference for public opinion: taste for work with indifference for glory: the care of one's health with indifference for life.

When one has been tormented and fatigued by his sensitiveness, he learns that be must live from day to day, forget all that is pos­sible, and efface his life from memory as it passes.

A man passed all his evenings for 30 years with a lady other than his wife. He finally lost his wife; one believed be would marry the other, and recommended him to do so. He refused. "I should not know," said he "where to go to pass my evenings."

I asked R., a man full of wit and talent, why he had shown him­self so little in the revolution of 1789. He replied: "It was be­ cause, for 30 years, I had found men so wicked privately and individually, that I did not dare to hope any good of them in public and taken collectively."

A young man asked me why Mrs. B. had refused the homage he offered, to run after Mr. L. who seemed to refuse her advances. I told him: "My dear friend, Genoa, rich and powerful, offered its sovereignty to several kings, who all refused it; yet they went to war to possess Corsica, which produces nothing except chest­ nuts, but which was proud and independent."

Rousseau, it is said, had been favoured by the Countess of Bouf­flers, and had even gone so far as to neglect her, which put them in a bad temper with one another. One day someone remarked in their presence that the love of the human race extinguishes love of country. "For my part," said she, "I judge by myself and I feel it is not true. I am a very good Frenchwoman, and I none the less interest myself in the happiness of all." "Yes, I understand you,'' said Rousseau, "you are French at heart, and cosmopolitan as regards the rest of your person."