# Chamfort's best maxims

A caustic moralist of the last years of the Ancien Régime, Chamfort left Maxims and Thoughts published after his death in 1795: the most famous ones, on laughter, courtiers, books and life.

- 3 votes · 12 items
- Mar 11, 2022 · astronome99
- https://even.best/en/l/4531/chamfort-s-best-maxims

## Top 12

1. **Esteem is worth more than celebrity, respect more than renown, and honour more than glory.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
2. **Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, very few good remedies and almost no cures.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
3. **All passions exaggerate, and they are passions only because they exaggerate.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
4. **The most wasted of all days is the one on which you have not laughed.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
5. **Courtiers are paupers grown rich by begging.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
6. **Most books today look as if they were made in a day from books read the day before.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
7. **In great matters men show themselves as it suits them to appear; in small ones, as they are.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
8. **Living is an illness that sleep relieves every sixteen hours; that is a palliative: death is the cure.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
9. **The passions make a man live; wisdom only makes him last.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
10. **Enjoy and give enjoyment, without harming yourself or anyone else: that, I believe, is the whole of morality.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
11. **Learning the ills of nature, we despise death; learning those of society, we despise life.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.
12. **The best philosophy towards the world is to combine the sarcasm of cheerfulness with the indulgence of contempt.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Maxims and Thoughts.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.