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Title: The cynic's breviary: Maxims and anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort
Author: Chamfort, Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas, Hutchison, William G.
Language: English
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THE
CYNIC’S BREVIARY
_MAXIMS AND ANECDOTES FROM
NICOLAS DE CHAMFORT_
SELECTED AND TRANSLATED BY
WILLIAM G. HUTCHISON
LONDON
ELKIN MATHEWS
VIGO STREET
1902
Preface
SÉBASTIEN-ROCH NICOLAS DE CHAMFORT was born in 1741 and died in
1794. Thus he traversed almost the whole of the latter half of the
century, that in France began with the closing years of one great
ruler and ended with the accession to supreme power of another--the
century of social license and colloquial philosophy, of encyclopædists
and actresses, of blue-stockings and wits. He knew every one worth
knowing--Voltaire, Madame Dubarry, Diderot, Charlotte Corday,
Helvetius, Mademoiselle de L’Espinasse, St. Just, Marie Antoinette,
and all the other prominent figures of that fascinating age. Most
essentially he was a man of his time, a misanthrope who shone in
society, a cynic with a curious vein of humanitarian optimism.
About his birth hangs much mystery. A. M. Mège has proved, to his
own satisfaction at least, that Chamfort was the lawful offspring of
a respectable grocer, but all other authorities agree that he was
an illegitimate child, though they are far from being unanimous in
assigning his father and mother. That paternity is a matter of opinion,
maternity a matter of fact is an old piece of wisdom, but in this
case even the latter is doubtful. The one point certain is that the
only name to which our author was legally entitled was Nicolas. The
Chamfort with its aristocratic “de” was his own invention, just as
Molière was that of Poquelin, Voltaire of Arouet, D’Alembert of Jean
Lerond. Influence won Chamfort a good education, and at school and
college he played the part of youthful prodigy in two ways; he carried
off prizes and in the end was rusticated for writing lampoons on the
professors. A few months’ nomad existence in Normandy with two other
scapegraces followed, and then the prodigal returned, was forgiven
and became an abbé. Lest he be accused of hypocrisy in thus taking
orders, I must hasten to say that no particular sanctity of life or
opinions was essential to an abbé of that period. “The abbés,” says M.
Houssaye, “were amiable pagans living gaily outside the Church, who
read a different sense into the scriptures from that in vogue now. They
went to the Court, to balls and the Opera; they masked and dabbled in
adventure--and they said their prayers after supper.”
Chamfort’s instincts naturally drew him to literature both as a means
of support and as a path to society. But, like other aspirants, he
found editors and publishers unappreciative, and he was growing weary
of his efforts when one day he happened on an old schoolfellow who had
entered the Church, but, so he confessed, was always at a loss for
words in the pulpit. “Listen to me,” said Chamfort, and he delivered a
glowing apostrophe to his ill fortune. Lost in admiration the priest
promptly offered a louis apiece for any sermons Chamfort would write
for him. The bargain was concluded, a sermon was composed weekly and
the preacher declaimed his second-hand thunder to the satisfaction
of himself and his flock. But Chamfort aimed higher than devilling
for the clergy and won a reputation in competing successfully for
the Academic prizes then in vogue. The _Éloge de Molière_ is perhaps
his most accomplished essay in this direction, though it is of no
particular significance as criticism. With these honours and the
successful production, in 1764, of his comedy _La Jeune Indienne_, we
find Chamfort fairly launched in Parisian society, faring sumptuously
every day--in other people’s houses, petted by great ladies, for he was
goodlooking and had a gift for flirtation, and under the affectionate
care of the “nursing mother of the philosophers,” Madame Helvetius.
Henceforth his career seemed shaped out for him. Though never rich, he
had too many wealthy friends for penury to be again a menace to him or
his mother, whom, to his credit be it said, he supported loyally; if
his health was uncertain it was his own hard living that made it so.
It is easy to mistake the real nature of aristocratic French society
in the eighteenth century. We are apt to think of it as haughtily
exclusive, divided by a great gulf from the classes below it. The great
gulf might be there in theory, but in practice any one of agreeable
presence, good manners and a pretty wit was assured a safe passage
across. To maintain his position Chamfort had not, it seems, to play
the part of toady; indeed he apparently found the opposite tactics the
better. In one of his anecdotes he tells us of a respectful admirer
of women who has to confess that, had he despised them, he would have
enjoyed the favours of more. In like manner it may be that Chamfort’s
professed contempt for society endeared him to it. The acidity of
his reflections no doubt had its charm for a world which delighted in
verbal encounters, in dialectic and philosophy, and, while studiously
avoiding the practice of morality, showed appreciation of it by packing
it into maxims, dialogues, and tales. It is, moreover, one of the
redeeming features of a corrupt and frivolous society that, as a rule,
it has a sense of humour and can laugh at its own follies. This is what
your earnest fanatic cannot do, and accordingly when Chamfort, with his
power of seeing more than one side to a question, aimed his sarcasms at
the revolutionaries in their turn, he drew down their wrath upon his
head.
With Chamfort’s progress in society I have not space to deal
adequately. Suffice it that he made influential friends, especially
amongst women, including Marie Antoinette, got various comfortable
little pensions settled upon him, travelled, was elected to the Forty
Immortals, and, much to the surprise of his friends, married and was
devoted to his wife, a clever woman of the world, till her death six
months later. Among his best friends was Mirabeau, and, curious as it
may seem to those who remember the prominent part taken by the latter
in the history of the time, his relation to Chamfort was that of
disciple to master. With all Mirabeau’s vigour he lacked the other’s
subtlety and tact, and he came to regard him as a kind of external
conscience. “Never a day passes ... in which I do not find myself
saying--“_Chamfort froncerait le sourcil, ne faisons pas, n’écrivons
pas cela._”” So far indeed did Mirabeau carry his admiration, that
he employed Chamfort, as the young preacher had done, to write his
speeches for him. So says Rivarol, to whom Mirabeau appeared “a great
sponge always swollen with the ideas of others,” and documentary
evidence bears him out.
On the outbreak of the revolution, Chamfort, much to the indignant
surprise of his aristocratic friends, who had not perhaps taken his
advanced views very seriously, threw in his lot with the popular
party. For a time he was secretary of the Jacobin Club, and we
discover the fine gentleman of the salons among the stormers of the
Bastille. The sincerity of Chamfort’s revolutionary fervour has been
questioned, and brooding over the stigma of his birth assigned as its
real cause. But we may allow, I think, that he genuinely believed the
overcharged political and social atmosphere required a beneficent
revolutionary thunderstorm to clear it. Had not he, moreover, been
among the prophets? To him the final outburst was no matter for
surprise. Whatever his motives, he was a valuable acquisition to his
new associates, and his biting wit won him in the Clubs the nickname of
“La Rochefoucauld Chamfort.” But in time he developed an unfortunate
habit of finding the weak points of the ruling party and pointing them
out in his pungent fashion. In his famous “_sois mon frère ou je vous
tue_,” he tersely summed up Jacobin pretensions, and the Jacobins
not unnaturally resented this and other witticisms. In short he was
haled before the tribunal, imprisoned, then released, but only to be
threatened with imprisonment again. This harassed existence was too
much for poor Chamfort, and, rather than endure a new captivity,
he attempted suicide with a pistol and a razor. Unluckily he only
succeeded in wounding himself horribly, and lingered on for some months
longer. His death took place on April 13, 1794. Chamfort’s is not
altogether a sympathetic personality, but one cannot grudge a regret
over the miserable end of a brilliant career.
It was not, one must insist, the career of a great man of letters. Had
Chamfort left nothing behind him but the mediocre literary baggage
which fills the greater part of the five volumes of his works edited by
M. Auguis in 1824, he would be no more than a name to us, one of the
mob of gentlemen who write with ease and most assuredly do _not_ write
for posterity. His verses, his _éloges_, his comedies, the tragedy
which he wrote since everybody had to father a tragedy, have the dust
of oblivion thick upon him, dust little like to be disturbed save by
the curious student. It is as a talker, the greatest of his age, that
Chamfort survives. His collection of anecdotes, told with inimitable
verve and terseness, forms a document of capital importance to the
social historian; but it is in the maxims and _pensées_, coinage of his
own incisive wit, that we find the man at his best. Comparison with
his great predecessor in this field, La Rochefoucauld, is inevitable,
but Chamfort emerges from it with little loss of credit. If he lack
La Rochefoucauld’s breadth, serenity, restraint, and universality of
penetration, he surpasses the elder moralist in passion, daring, and,
one may add, sincerity. Chamfort does not stand aloof from the world
whose weak points he touches, now in pity, now in scorn; his sayings
are instinct with personality; behind the aphorism we behold the man, a
latter-day Ecclesiastes, who, nevertheless, has visions at times of a
Promised Land beyond the wilderness.
As regards form, Chamfort’s _pensées_ are well nigh perfect. He had
of course the advantage of writing them in the language best fitted
for the purpose, but even this allowed, they are masterpieces of
pregnant brevity. “Those people,” said Balzac of Chamfort and his
contemporary Rivarol, “put whole volumes into a single _bon mot_, while
nowadays ’tis a marvel if we find a _bon mot_ in a volume.” This is
the extravagance of praise. In more measured terms John Stuart Mill
and Schopenhauer expressed their admiration of the genius displayed in
Chamfort’s _pensées_, those “_flèches acérées_,” to quote Sainte-Beuve,
“_qui arrivent brusquement et sifflent encore_.” Yes, for, after all,
we have not made such wonderful progress since Chamfort’s day, but that
some of these keen arrows of his find their mark still.
W. G. H.
_January, 1902._
⁂ It is perhaps a point of some interest from a bibliographical point
of view, that this is the first translation into English of any of
Chamfort’s writings.
The Cynic’s Breviary
NATURE has not said to me: Be not poor; still less: Be rich. But she
cries out to me: Be independent.
* * * * *
“THE difference between you and myself,” said a friend to me, “is that
you have said to all the masqueraders: ‘I know you,’ whilst I have left
them the hope that they are deceiving me. That is why the world favours
me more than you. It is a masked ball, the interest of which you have
spoiled for others and the amusement for yourself.”
* * * * *
A MAN of wit is lost, if to his wit he does not join energy of
character. If you have the lantern of Diogenes, you must also have his
cudgel.
* * * * *
THERE are more fools than wise men, and even in the wise man himself
there is more folly than wisdom.
* * * * *
THE worst wasted of all days is that during which one has not laughed.
* * * * *
THE best philosophical attitude to adopt towards the world is a union
of the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.
* * * * *
WE must be just before being generous, as we must possess shirts before
having lace embroideries.
* * * * *
EDUCATION must have two foundations--morality as a support for virtue,
prudence as a defence for self against the vices of others. By letting
the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or
martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating
egoists. The one great social principle is to be just both to yourself
and to others. If you must love your neighbour as yourself, it is at
least as fair to love yourself as your neighbour.
* * * * *
PUBLIC opinion is a jurisdiction which the honest man must never fully
recognize, and which he must never ignore.
* * * * *
IT must be admitted that to live in the world without from time to time
acting a part is impossible. What distinguishes the honest man from the
knave is, that the former only does so when absolutely obliged and to
escape a danger, while the latter seeks for opportunities.
* * * * *
A MAN who is not only honest but wise owes it to himself to add to the
prudence that satisfies his conscience, the prudence that foresees and
disarms calumny.
* * * * *
I CANNOT conceive of a wisdom that lacks distrust: according to the
Scriptures the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God--I believe it is
rather the fear of men.
* * * * *
WE must needs have the power of uniting contrarieties: love of virtue
with indifference to public opinion, taste for work with indifference
to glory, attention to health with indifference to life.
* * * * *
THERE are few vices that prevent a man from having many friends so much
as his too high qualities prevent him.
* * * * *
VANITY is often the motive that forces a man to summon up all the
energy of his soul. Wood added to a steel point makes a dart, two
feathers added to the wood make an arrow.
* * * * *
A MAN of no principles is also, as a rule, a man of no character, for
had he been born with character, he would have felt the need of forming
principles.
* * * * *
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 two means to preserve one’s freedom and one’s character.
* * * * *
WHAT I have learnt I no longer know; what I still know has come to me
by intuition.
* * * * *
MAN can aspire to virtue; he cannot reasonably aim at finding truth.
* * * * *
MAN reaches each stage in his life as a novice.
* * * * *
THE majority of human beings in the world pass their lives in it so
heedlessly and think so little, that they do not know that world which
they have before their eyes every day. They do not, M. de B. wittily
remarked, for the same reason that cockchafers have no acquaintance
with natural history.
* * * * *
’TIS not generally known how much wit a man requires to avoid being
ridiculous.
* * * * *
“ARE you not ashamed to wish to speak better than you can?” said Seneca
to one of his sons who could not work out the exordium of an oration
he was composing. One might say the same to those who adopt principles
stronger than their character will bear. “Are you not ashamed of
wishing to be more of a philosopher than you can be?”
* * * * *
IN great actions men show themselves as they ought to be, in small
actions as they are.
* * * * *
VAIN is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that
one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for
what it is.
* * * * *
HE is far advanced in the study of morals who can lay his finger on
all the points that distinguish pride from vanity. The first is lofty,
calm, dignified, imperturbable, resolute; the second mean, inconstant,
easily swayed, restless, unsteady. One raises a man, the other puffs
him up. The first is source of a thousand virtues, the second that of
nearly all vices and all caprices. There is a kind of pride in which
are comprised all the commandments of God, a kind of vanity that
embodies the seven deadly sins.
* * * * *
CELEBRITY: the advantage of being known to those who do not know you.
* * * * *
THE love of glory a virtue! A strange virtue truly, that calls to
its aid the co-operation of all the vices, that finds stimulants in
ambition, envy, vanity, sometimes even avarice! Would Titus have been
Titus had he had as his ministers Sejanus, Narcissus, and Tigellinus?
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
THOUGHT consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you
ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it you.
* * * * *
THAT to feel makes one think is pretty generally admitted; that to
think makes one feel finds less acceptance, but is almost as true.
* * * * *
THE intelligence is often to the heart what the library of a mansion is
to the person of its master.
* * * * *
A BAD man will occasionally do a good action. One might say that he
wishes to see whether it gives as much pleasure as honest folk assert.
* * * * *
STUPIDITY would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.
Vice would not be absolute vice did it not hate virtue.
* * * * *
ONE suspects the idleness of a knave and the silence of a fool.
* * * * *
GENEROSITY is the pitifulness of noble hearts.
* * * * *
ALL passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions.
* * * * *
“THE manner in which I see you distributing praise and blame,” said M.
de B---- to a friend, “would make the best man in the world anxious to
be defamed.”
* * * * *
FALSE modesty is the most decent of all deceptions.
* * * * *
THERE are certain failings that preserve one from some epidemic vices,
just as it may be noted that in time of plague fever-stricken patients
escape contagion.
* * * * *
THE philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the
chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
* * * * *
ONE of the great misfortunes of man is that even his good qualities are
sometimes useless to him, and that the art of profiting by them and
governing them wisely is often the tardy fruit of experience alone.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
HOPE is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself
happiness only began when I had lost it. I would fain inscribe upon the
gate of Paradise the line that Dante wrote upon that of Hell--“Lasciate
ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.”
* * * * *
OUR reason sometimes makes us as unhappy as our passions, and in such
a case one can say of a man that he is a patient poisoned by his
physician.
* * * * *
IT is nature’s will that wise men have their illusions as well as
fools, to the end that they be not made too unhappy by their own wisdom.
* * * * *
THAT tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Bible is a fine
allegory. Is it not intended to signify that when one has penetrated to
the depths of things, the consequent loss of illusions brings about the
death of the soul--that is to say a complete detachment from all that
moves and interests other men?
* * * * *
THE physical world appears the work of a good and mighty Being who has
had to abandon the execution of part of his plan to a maleficent Being.
But the moral world seems rather the production of a crazy fiend’s
caprices.
* * * * *
WHEN I hear it argued that, taking everything into account, the least
sensitive folk are the happiest, I remember the Indian proverb: “Better
to be seated than standing, better to be lying than seated, but better
than all else to be dead.”
* * * * *
LIVING is a disease from the pains of which sleep eases us every
sixteen hours; sleep is but a palliative, death alone is the cure.
* * * * *
TIME diminishes for us the intensity of _absolute_ pleasures, to use
the metaphysician’s term, but apparently it increases _relative_
pleasures; and I suspect that this is the artifice by which nature is
able to attach men to life after the loss of the objects or pleasures
which most rendered it agreeable.
* * * * *
SOME ONE described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt
some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.
* * * * *
M. ---- said to me, _à propos_ of his constant offences against
digestion, and of the pleasures in which he indulged--the only
obstacles to his regaining his health: “I should be marvellously well
if it were not for myself.”
* * * * *
NATURE seems to make use of men for the accomplishment of her designs
without concerning herself about her instruments, like tyrants who rid
themselves of those who have been of service to them.
* * * * *
THERE is no need to regard Burrhus as an absolutely virtuous man; he is
only so, contrasted with Narcissus. Seneca and Burrhus are the honest
men of an age in which there are none.
* * * * *
IN order to sum up in a single word the rarity of honest folk, a friend
remarked to me that in society the honest man is a variety of the
human species.
* * * * *
I USED to know a misanthrope who in his good-humoured moments would
say: “I should not be at all surprised if there were an honest man
hidden away in some corner without any one knowing of him.”
* * * * *
THE thrifty man is the richest, the miser the poorest of men.
* * * * *
AN empty headed fellow who has a passing flash of wit astonishes and
scandalises one as does a cab horse at a gallop.
* * * * *
I SHOULD advise any one who wishes to obtain a favour of a minister to
accost him with an air of melancholy rather than one of gaiety. We do
not like to see others happier than ourselves.
* * * * *
HE that is precisely midway between our enemy and ourselves seems to us
nearer our enemy; this is but an effect of optical laws, like that by
which the jet of a fountain seems less distant from the other side of
the basin than from that where we are standing.
* * * * *
IT was said of a man who was always conjuring up gloomy chimæras and
saw only the dark side of everything: “He builds dungeons in Spain.”
* * * * *
MADAME DE ROCHEFORT was asked if she were anxious to know the future.
“No,” she replied, “it is too like the past.”
* * * * *
THE new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom
we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends
what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natural
teeth and legs of flesh and bone.
* * * * *
BY learning the evil elements in nature we despise death, by learning
those of society we despise life.
* * * * *
SOCIETY would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one
another.
* * * * *
“IN the world,” remarked some one to me, “you have three kinds of
friends: the friends who love you, the friends who do not trouble their
heads about you, and the friends who hate you.”
* * * * *
IT must be admitted that in order to live happy in the world there are
sides to the soul which we must absolutely paralyse.
* * * * *
MAN under present social conditions seems to me corrupted more by
his reason than by his passions. His passions--I mean those that
characterise the primitive man--have preserved for society the few
natural elements it still possesses.
* * * * *
SPEAKING generally, were society not an artificial structure, every
simple and genuine feeling would not produce the great effect it does;
it would give pleasure without surprise, but, as a matter of fact, it
both surprises and pleases. Our surprise is a satire on society, our
pleasure an act of homage to nature.
* * * * *
OFTEN man lives by himself and he has need of virtue; he lives with
others and he has need of honour.
* * * * *
ARE you the friend of a gentleman about the Court, of a man of quality,
as the saying is, and do you wish to inspire in him the warmest
affection of which the human heart is capable? If so, do not confine
yourself to lavishing on him the tenderest cares of friendship,
to helping him out of his troubles, consoling him in affliction,
consecrating your every moment to him, saving on occasion his life
or his honour. Do not waste your time on such trifles; do more, do
better--work out his genealogical tree.
* * * * *
THERE is a wide-spread belief that the art of pleasing is a valuable
means of making one’s fortune. But to know how to be bored is an art
which gives far better results; indeed talent for making a fortune like
that for succeeding with women, can almost be reduced to that art.
* * * * *
THE great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.
* * * * *
A PHILOSOPHER who had retired from the world wrote me a letter full of
good advice and common sense. It concluded with these words: “Farewell,
my friend; maintain if you can the interests that bind you to society,
but cultivate the feelings that cut you away from it.”
* * * * *
SUCH is the miserable condition of men, that they must needs seek
consolation in society for the evils of nature, and in nature for the
evils of society. How many have failed to find either in one or the
other distraction from their troubles!
* * * * *
M. ---- WAS reproached for his love of solitude. “You see,” he said, “I
am more accustomed to my own failings than to those of other people.”
* * * * *
WEAKNESS of character or lack of ideas, in a word all that can withhold
us from living a solitary life, are things that preserve many a man
from misanthropy.
* * * * *
“WHY Madame de L. should be so anxious for me to visit her,” said a
friend to me, “I do not know, for when some time has elapsed without
my going I despise her less.” The same might be said of the world in
general.
* * * * *
I ASKED M. N---- why he had ceased to go into society. “Because,” he
replied, “I no longer love the women and I know the men.”
* * * * *
SOCIETY, what people call the world, is nothing more than the war
of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the
vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other,
intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph
of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain
unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the
eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later--this is what is
called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!
* * * * *
WHAT makes the success of many books consists in the affinity there is
between the mediocrity of the author’s ideas and those of the public.
* * * * *
THE majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having
been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.
* * * * *
THERE are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed
fools.
* * * * *
IT is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their
masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is
most fertile.
* * * * *
THE tragic drama has the great moral drawback of attaching too high an
importance to life and death.
* * * * *
SPERON-SPERONI admirably explains how it is that an author who, in
his own opinion, delivers himself clearly, is sometimes obscure to
his reader. “It is because,” he says, “the author proceeds from the
thought to the expression, the reader from the expression to the
thought.”
* * * * *
A MAN is not clever simply because he has many ideas, just as he is not
necessarily a good general because he has many soldiers.
* * * * *
A POETASTER asked Chamfort’s opinion on a couplet. “Excellent,” he
said, “were it not for its length.”
* * * * *
SOME one 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.
* * * * *
AN interesting work might be compiled which would point out all the
noxious ideas concerning the human spirit, society and morality, to be
found argued or implicit in the most celebrated writings and the most
highly revered authors; ideas which propagate religious superstition,
evil political principles, despotism, class pride and popular
prejudices of every kind. Such a work would demonstrate that nearly
all books corrupt, and that the best do almost as much harm as good.
* * * * *
THERE are two classes of moralists and political writers; those who
have only seen human nature on its detestable or absurd side, and they
form the greater number: Lucian, Montaigne, Labruyère, Larochefoucauld,
Swift, Mandeville, Helvetius, &c.; those who have only seen it on its
finer side and in its perfection like Shaftesbury and some others. The
first know nothing of the palace, the pig-sties of which are all that
they have seen; the second are enthusiasts, who turn their eyes far
from all that offends them, but that, none the less, exists. _Est in
medio verum._
* * * * *
PHYSICAL scourges and the calamities of human nature rendered society
necessary. Society has added to natural misfortunes. The drawbacks
of society have made government necessary, and government adds to
society’s misfortunes. There is the history of human nature in a
nutshell.
* * * * *
MEN’S ideas are like cards and other games. Ideas which I remember
to have seen regarded as dangerous and over-bold have since become
commonplace and almost trite, and have descended to men little worthy
of them. So it is that some of the ideas which to-day we call audacious
will be considered feeble and conventional by our descendants.
* * * * *
IT has been observed that writers on physics, natural history,
physiology, and chemistry, are, as a rule, men of mild, equable
temperament and happy; whilst, on the contrary, writers on politics,
law, and even ethics, are of a sad and melancholy cast of mind. Nothing
can be more simple: the former study nature, the latter society, the
former contemplate the work of the supreme Being, the latter confine
their gaze to the work of men. The respective results must needs be
diverse.
* * * * *
SAID a witty misanthrope to me _à propos_ of the iniquities of men,
“It is only the uselessness of the first Deluge that preserves us from
being visited by a second.”
* * * * *
THERE are periods when public opinion is the worst of opinions.
* * * * *
THE majority of our social institutions seem to have as object the
maintenance of man in a mediocrity of ideas and emotions, which renders
him best fitted to govern or be governed.
* * * * *
THERE is no man who can be by himself alone so contemptible as a body
of men, and there is no body of men that can be so contemptible as the
public at large.
* * * * *
IT may be argued that every public idea, every accepted convention, is
a piece of stupidity, for has it not commended itself to the greatest
number?
* * * * *
THE public is governed as it reasons. It is its right to say foolish
things, as it is that of the ministers to do them.
* * * * *
A CERTAIN witty advocate remarked: “One would risk being disgusted if
one saw politics, justice, and one’s dinner in the making.”
* * * * *
’TIS easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.
* * * * *
EXPERIENCE which enlightens private persons corrupts princes and
officials.
* * * * *
HAD any one told Adam, on the day following the death of Abel, that
some centuries later there would be places where, in an enclosure of
twelve square miles, seven or eight hundred thousand people would be
concentrated, piled one upon another, do you imagine he would have
believed it possible that such multitudes could ever live together?
Would he not have conceived an idea of the crimes and monstrosities
that would be committed under such conditions much more terrible than
the reality has proved? This is a point we ought to bear in mind, as
a consolation for the drawbacks of these extraordinary assemblages of
human beings.
* * * * *
WERE a historian like Tacitus to write a history of the best of our
kings, giving an exact account of all the tyrannical acts and abuses
of authority, the majority of which lie buried in the profoundest
obscurity, there would be few reigns which would not inspire us with
the same horror as that of Tiberius.
* * * * *
OFTEN in early youth an opinion or custom seems absurd to us, which,
with advancing years, we discover has some justification and so appears
less absurd. Ought we to conclude from this that certain customs
are not so ridiculous as others? One might sometimes be tempted to
think that they were established by people who had read the book of
life through, and that they are judged by those who, despite their
intelligence, have only glanced at a few pages.
* * * * *
LIKE animals that cannot breathe at a certain altitude without
perishing, the slave dies in the atmosphere of freedom.
* * * * *
IT is unfortunate for men, fortunate perhaps for tyrants, that the poor
and unhappy have not the instinct or pride of the elephant which does
not reproduce itself in servitude.
* * * * *
THERE is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the
history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a
collection of anecdotes.
* * * * *
WILL it be believed that despotism has its partizans on the ground of
the necessity for encouraging the fine arts? The brilliancy of the
reign of Louis XIV. has to an incredible extent multiplied the number
of those who think thus. According to them the crowning glory of all
human society is to have fine tragedies, fine comedies and other works
of art. There are those who willingly forgive all the evil wrought by
priests, since without the priests we should not have had the comedy of
_Tartuffe_.
* * * * *
WHAT is a cardinal? He is a priest clad in scarlet, who receives a
hundred thousand crowns from the king, to flout him in the name of the
pope.
* * * * *
SOCIETY is composed of two great classes--those who have more dinners
than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
* * * * *
CHANGE in fashion is the tax which the industry of the poor levies on
the vanity of the rich.
* * * * *
IT is an incontestable fact that there are in France seven million folk
who beg for alms, and another twelve millions who are too poor to give
them.
* * * * *
THE nobility, say the nobles, is an intermediary between the king and
the people.... Precisely; just as the hound is the intermediary between
the huntsman and the hares.
* * * * *
FRANCE is a country where it is often useful to exhibit one’s vices,
and invariably dangerous to exhibit one’s virtues.
* * * * *
A FRIEND said to me _à propos_ of some ridiculous ministerial blunders:
“If it were not for the government, we should have nothing left to
laugh at in France.”
* * * * *
IN France we leave unmolested those who set fire to the house and
persecute those who sound the alarm bell.
* * * * *
PARIS is a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four fifths of the
inhabitants die of grief.
* * * * *
WHEN princes condescend to emerge from their miserable systems of
etiquette it is never in favour of a man of merit, but of a wench or a
buffoon. When women forget themselves it is never for love of an honest
man but of a rascal. In short when people break the yoke of public
opinion, it is rarely to rise above it, nearly always to descend below
it.
* * * * *
ONE must make choice between loving women and knowing them; there is no
middle course.
* * * * *
NATURALISTS tell us that in all animal species degeneration begins
in the female. In civilised society philosophers can apply this
observation to morals.
* * * * *
APPARENTLY nature, in giving man an absolutely irradicable taste for
women, must have foreseen that, without this precaution, the contempt
inspired by the vices of their sex, vanity in particular, would be a
great obstacle to the maintenance and propagation of the human species.
* * * * *
A MAN who professed to esteem women highly was asked if he had enjoyed
the favours of many. “Not so many as if I had despised them,” he said.
* * * * *
WHATEVER evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks
more.
* * * * *
YOUNG women have a misfortune which they share with kings, that of
having no friends; but happily they feel this misfortune as little as
the kings: the latter’s pomp and the former’s vanity spare both that
emotion.
* * * * *
MADAME DE MONTMORIN said to her son: “You are going into society: I
have only one piece of advice to give you, and that is to be in love
with all the women.”
* * * * *
A WITTY woman told me one day what may well be the secret of her sex:
it is that every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the
way in which other women regard the man than of her own.
* * * * *
THE woman who esteems herself more for her gifts of soul or
intelligence than for her beauty is above her sex. She who esteems
herself more for her beauty than for her intelligence or soul is of her
sex. But she who esteems herself more for her birth or rank than for
her beauty is outside her sex, beneath it.
* * * * *
MADAME DE TALMONT, seeing M. de Richelieu neglecting her to pay
attentions to Madame de Brionne, a very beautiful woman, but said to
be rather stupid, remarked to him: “You are not blind, Marshall, but I
cannot help thinking you a little deaf.”
* * * * *
MADEMOISELLE DUTHÉ having lost a lover, and the affair causing some
talk, a man who called to see her found her playing the harp, and said
with surprise: “Good heavens! I was expecting to find you desolated
with grief.” “Ah,” she exclaimed in a pathetic tone, “you ought to have
seen me yesterday!”
* * * * *
A WOMAN was at a performance of the tragedy of _Mérope_, and did not
weep: surprise was expressed. “I could cry my eyes out,” she said, “but
I have to go out to supper to-night.”
* * * * *
A YOUNG man was advised to ask a woman of forty, with whom he had been
head over ears in love, to return his letters. “I don’t suppose she has
them any longer,” he said. “Oh yes,” was the reply, “about the age of
thirty women begin to keep their love letters.”
* * * * *
“HE who has not seen much of _demi-mondaines_ does not understand women
at all,” gravely remarked to me a fond admirer of his own wife, who was
unfaithful to him.
* * * * *
I REMEMBER to have seen a man forsaking the society of ballet girls
because, so he said, he had found them as deceitful as honest women.
* * * * *
SOMEONE remarked of a lady who was not venal, followed her heart’s
promptings, and remained faithful to the object of her choice, “She
is a charming woman and lives as virtuously as is possible outside
marriage and celibacy.”
* * * * *
WOMEN only give to friendship what they borrow from love.
* * * * *
LOVE as it exists in society is nothing more than the exchange of two
fancies and the contact of two epidermes.
* * * * *
DUCLOS was speaking one day of the paradise that everyone imagines for
himself in his own way. “Here are the ingredients for yours, Duclos,”
said Madame de Rochefort; “Wine, bread, and cheese, and the first woman
who might come on the scene.”
* * * * *
APPARENTLY love does not seek real perfections--one might say it
fears them. It only loves those which it creates or supposes, and so
resembles those monarchs who only recognise the great things they
themselves have achieved.
* * * * *
A MAN in love who pities the reasonable man seems to me like one who
reads fairy tales and jeers at those who read history.
* * * * *
LOVE resembles epidemic diseases: the more one fears them, the more
liable is one to infection.
* * * * *
IN witnessing or experiencing the pains inseparable from intense
feeling in love and friendship, be it by the death of the loved person
or by the accidents of life, one is tempted to believe that dissipation
and frivolity are not such great follies after all, and that life is
scarce worth more than what fashionable folk make of it.
* * * * *
MARRIAGE follows on love as smoke on flame.
* * * * *
LOVE gives greater pleasure than marriage for the same reason that
romances are more amusing than history.
* * * * *
ONE of the best reasons you can have for never marrying is not so much
that you are the woman’s dupe as that she is not yours.
* * * * *
BOTH marriage and celibacy have their respective drawbacks: we shall be
wise if we make choice of that which is not irremediable.
* * * * *
FOR thirty years a certain man went to spend every evening with Mme.
----. When his wife died his friends believed he would marry the other,
and urged him to do so. “No, no,” he said, “if I did, where should I
have to spend my evenings?”
* * * * *
I WAS sitting at dinner beside a man who asked me if the lady opposite
him was the wife of the gentleman at her side. I had noticed that the
latter had not exchanged a word with his neighbour, so I replied: “He
either does not know her or else she _is_ his wife.”
* * * * *
LORD BOLINGBROKE gave Louis XIV. a thousand proofs of affectionate
attention during a very dangerous illness. The king with some
astonishment remarked: “I am the more touched by it because you English
do not love kings.” “Sire,” replied Bolingbroke, “we are like those
husbands who, having no love for their own wives, are only the more
eager to please those of their neighbours.”
* * * * *
TO turn a widow from the idea of marrying again, one of her friends
remarked to her: “Don’t you see that it is a very fine thing to bear
the name of a man who can no longer make a fool of himself?”
* * * * *
THE sincerest of affections lays the soul open to petty passions.
Marriage makes your soul liable to your wife’s petty passions; also,
ambition, vanity, and the like.
* * * * *
LA GABRIELLI, a celebrated singer, having asked 5,000 ducats from the
Empress of Russia as her fee for singing at St. Petersburg for two
months, the latter replied: “I pay none of my field marshals on that
scale.” “In that case,” said La Gabrielli, “Your Majesty has only
to make your field marshals sing.” The Empress paid the 5,000 ducats
without further demur.
* * * * *
A PRINT-SELLER asked, on June 25th, a high price for a portrait of
Madame Lamotte, who had been flogged and branded on the 21st, giving as
his reason that it was a proof before letters.
* * * * *
AN entertainment manager was asking M. de Villars to waive the right of
free admission for the king’s pages. “You must observe, my lord,” he
said, “that several pages make a volume.”
* * * * *
MARSHALL DE BIRON had a very dangerous illness; he wished to confess
himself, and said before several of his friends: “What I owe to God,
what I owe to the king, what I owe to the State--” “Hush, hush,”
interrupted one of his friends, “you will die insolvent.”
* * * * *
SOME young courtiers were supping with M. de Conflans. The first song
of the evening was broad but not too improper. Immediately thereafter,
however, M. de Fronsac rose and sang some abominable couplets which
amazed the company, gay as it was. There was a dead silence, broken by
M. de Conflans, who observed: “Fronsac, you surprise me! There are ten
bottles of champagne between that song and the first.”
* * * * *
A WOMAN of ninety said to M. de Fontenelle, then ninety-five: “Death
has forgotten us.” “Hush!” replied M. de Fontenelle, putting his finger
to his lips.
* * * * *
TO obtain dry weather, it was arranged to have a procession with the
shrine of St. Geneviève. Scarcely had the cortege started, however,
than it began to rain. On which the Bishop of Castres wittily remarked:
“The saint is mistaken--she believes we are asking her for rain.”
* * * * *
I ONCE heard an orthodox person denouncing those who discuss articles
of faith. “Gentlemen,” he said naïvely, “a true Christian does not
examine what he is ordered to believe. Dogma is like a bitter pill: if
you chew it, you will never be able to swallow it.”
* * * * *
M. DE ---- asked a certain bishop for a country house of his which he
never occupied. “Don’t you know,” said the bishop, “that a man ought
always to have some place to which he never goes, but where he believes
he would be happy?” “Yes,” replied M. de ----, “it is quite true--that
is what has made the fortune of Paradise.”
* * * * *
RULHIÈRE said to him one day: “I have only been guilty of one baseness
all my life.” “When will it end?” asked Chamfort.
PRINTED BY R. FOLKARD AND SON,
22, DEVONSHIRE STREET, QUEEN SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.
Transcriber’s Note
In this file, text in _italics_ is indicated by underscores, and text
in SMALL CAPITALS has been made uppercase.
The following corrections were made to the text as printed:
Page 6: “A M. Mège” changed to “A. M. Mège”.
12: “n’écrivons pas cela.” So far indeed” changed to “n’écrivons
pas cela.”” So far indeed”.
53: “petty passions also” changed to “petty passions; also”.
54: Both instances of “marshalls” changed to “marshals”.
55: “couplets whfch amazed” changed to “couplets which amazed”.
Otherwise, as far as possible, the original text has been preserved
unchanged.
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