CHAMFORT

Sébastien-Roch Nicolas, known in his adult life as Nicolas Chamfort and as Sébastien Nicolas de Chamfort (1741–1794), was a French writer, best known for his witty epigrams and aphorisms. He was secretary to Louis XVI's sister, and of the Jacobin club.

His literary reputation was not established until 1769, when the Académie française awarded him a prize for his Eloge on Molière. Until then, he lived from hand to mouth, mainly on the hospitality of people who gave him board and lodging in exchange for the pleasure of the conversation for which he was famous.

The outbreak of the French Revolution profoundly changed Chamfort's life. Theoretically a republican, he threw himself into the new movement with almost fanatical ardour, forgetting his old friends at court and devoting his entire small fortune to revolutionary propaganda. He became a street orator and was among the first to enter the Bastille when it was stormed.

With the reign of Marat and Robespierre, however, he became critical of uncompromising (1) Jacobinism, and with the fall of the Girondins his political life came to an end. But he could not restrain the tongue that had made him famous; he no more spared the Convention than he had spared the court. His notorious republicanism failed to excuse the sarcasms he lavished on the new order of things. Fingered by an assistant in the Bibliothèque Nationale, to a share in the direction of which he had been appointed by Jean Marie Roland, he was taken to the prison des Madelonnettes. Soon after his release, he was threatened again with arrest, but he decided that death was preferable to a repetition of the moral and physical restraint to which he had been subjected. 
(1) tough, inflexible; (intransigente)

Suicide

Unable to tolerate the prospect of being imprisoned once more, in September 1793 he locked himself into his office and shot himself in the face. The pistol malfunctioned and he did not die even though he shot off his nose and part of his jaw. He then repeatedly stabbed his neck with a paper cutter, but failed to cut an artery. He finally used the paper cutter to stab himself in the chest. He dictated to those who came to arrest him the well-known declaration Moi, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, déclare avoir voulu mourir en homme libre plutôt que d'être reconduit en esclave dans une maison d'arrêt ("I, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, hereby declare my wish to die a free man rather than to continue to live as a slave in a prison") which he signed in a firm hand and in his own blood. His butler found him unconscious in a pool of blood. From then until his death at Paris the following year, he suffered intensely and was attended to by a gendarme, whom he paid a crown a day.
To the Abbé Sieyès Chamfort had given fortune in the title of a pamphlet (Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-État ? Tout. Qu'a-t-il ? Rien), and Sieyès was likewise the person to whom he told his famous sarcastic bon mot Ah ! mon ami, je m'en vais enfin de ce monde, où il faut que le cœur se brise ou se bronze. Thus the maker of constitutions followed the dead wit to the grave.

Writings

The writings of Chamfort include comedies, political articles, literary criticisms, portraits, letters, and verses. His Maximes et Pensées, highly praised by John Stuart Mill, are, after those of La Rochefoucauld, among the most brilliant and suggestive sayings of the modern era. His aphorisms, less systematic and psychologically less important than those of La Rochefoucauld, are as significant in their violence and iconoclastic spirit of the period of storm and preparation that gave them birth as the Réflexions in their exquisite restraint and elaborate subtlety are characteristic of the tranquil elegance of their epoch. Moreover, they have the advantage of richness of colour, picturesqueness of phrase, passion, and audacity. Sainte-Beuve compares them to well-minted coins that retain their value, and to keen arrows that arrivent brusquement et sifflent encore. Although situated at the exact opposite of the political spectrum (see French Revolution) the maxims of Antoine de Rivarol are among those that easily compare in acidity and brilliance.

Suicide Notes

Note (Addressed to none in particular, signed in own blood):
Moi, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, déclare avoir voulu mourir en homme libre plutôt que d'être reconduit en esclave dans une maison d'arrêt
Translation: I, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, hereby declare my wish to die a free man rather than to continue to live as a slave in a prison.
(His last words were: “And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead.”)  
Translation: Ah! mon ami, je m'en vais enfin de ce monde, où il faut que le coeur se brise ou se bronze, from his quote: En vivant et en voyant les hommes, il faut que le coeur se brise ou se bronze.

 “Casi todos los hombres son esclavos, conforme a la razón que daban los espartanos de la servidumbre de los persas: por no saber pronunciar la sílaba no. Saber pronunciar esta palabra y saber vivir solos son los dos únicos medios que tenemos de conservar la libertad y el carácter”.
Esta es una de las máximas que integran las Máximas y Pensamientos, de Nicolás de Chamfort. Fue uno de los grandes moralistas franceses del siglo XVIII, maestro del aforismo, quizá el que más influencia ha ejercido, junto a la Rochefoucauld, en el pensamiento de filósofos posteriores tan importantes como Schopenhauer o Nietzsche. Nacido en 1740, Sebastian-Roch Nicolàs, fue producto de la relación ilegítima de una dama de la nobleza; hubo de elegir el seudónimo de Chamfort para darse a conocer en el mundo literario, donde pronto comenzó a destacar; hombre atractivo y afortunado con las mujeres, en su juventud contrajo una enfermedad de transmisión sexual que le afectó el resto de su vida y le agrió el carácter; se entusiasmó con la Revolución Francesa a la que prestó su apoyo, pero pronto denunció los excesos del Terror. Detenido por las autoridades revolucionarias, intentó suicidarse en dos ocasiones sin conseguirlo, muriendo a consecuencia de las heridas meses después.
Estos retazos biográficos pueden explicar el punto de vista tan pesimista de Chamfort, su talante cínico ante el amor y los convencionalismos sociales, pero no lo que a mí me ha resultado más interesante: el apasionante viaje de autoconocimiento que suponen estas máximas, recopiladas y publicadas póstumamente, su capacidad para desvelar las contradicciones que el autor percibe en sí mismo y en los demás. Con ese fin, Chamfort destaca la condición miserable de los hombres “que les lleva a buscar en la sociedad consuelos de los males de la naturaleza y, en la naturaleza consuelos de los males de la sociedad -sin encontrar- alivio a sus penas ni en una ni en otra”.
Aunque está convencido de que la sociedad solo se puede soportar cuando se es joven y se está poseído por las pasiones, sabe que muy pocos se retirarán por completo de ella porque “la debilidad de carácter o la falta de ideas, en una palabra, todo lo que puede impedirnos vivir con nosotros mismos,… preservan a muchos de la misantropía”. Es un decidido partidario de la razón pero al mismo tiempo, sabe que, de no ser por los errores que nos inducen a cometer las pasiones “tendrían muchas ventajas sobre la fría razón que a nadie hace feliz. Las pasiones hacen vivir al hombre, la prudencia le permite solo durar”. Y tampoco se muestra Chamfort como un pensador  que desapruebe cualquier otra vida que no sea la  intelectual o reflexiva. Al contrario, a su juicio “la vida contemplativa es a menudo miserable. Hay que obrar más, pensar menos y no mirarse vivir”. Este maestro de la reflexión esencial puso en cuestión su propia imagen pesimista y acre cuando afirmó que “la jornada más desaprovechada de todas es aquella en que no hemos reído”, buena prueba de que nunca perdió el sentido del humor.


APHORISMS
Here are some of the best aphorisms from Chamfort, whom Nietzsche called the “wittiest of all moralists (*)”.
(*) Moralist: a person who teaches / promotes morality or given to moralizing.


A day without laughter is a day wasted. Also: The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. 

A woman is like your shadow - follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows. 

All passions are exaggerated, otherwise they would not be passions. 

Apparently nature, in giving man an absolutely irreducible taste (10) 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.                                              (10) liking for (gusto por, amor a)

Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don`t know, and who don`t know us.

Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart. 

Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.

Few vices are more certain to prevent you from having lots of friends than possessing too many virtues.

Happiness is not easy to find. It's very difficult to find it in yourself — and impossible to find anywhere else.

Hope is a fake (2) which constantly misleads; I only achieved happiness myself once I’d given up hoping. (Over the entrance to my Paradise, I’d gladly write what Dante put over the entrance to his Inferno: ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.)

I once read that there’s nothing worse for everyone concerned than a reign that’s lasted too long. I’ve also heard that God is eternal.

If it wasn't for me, I'd do brilliantly.

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.

If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.

It is much easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy the rest.

In important matters, men display themselves as they want to be seen; in minor matters as they really are.

In order not to find life unbearable, you must accept two things: the damages of time and the injustices of man. Nicolas Chamfort.

Version: There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.  

It must be admitted that in society it’s impossible to avoid occasionally having to play-act. The distinction between a gentleman and a rogue is that the first play-acts only when forced or to protect himself, whereas the rogue actively looks for opportunities to do so.                                                                              

It is children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future.

It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.

It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged. (7)
(7) crazed, insane.

Love, a pleasant folly (9); ambition, a serious stupidity.                                       (9) foolishness, mistake, foolishness, silliness (sinsentido, estupidez)

Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history. 

Love, such as it is in society, is only the exchange of two fantasies, and the contact of two bodies.

Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.                                                                                 (9)  beginner at [sth], inexperienced.

Nature didn’t tell me “Don’t be poor”; and certainly didn’t say: “Get rich”; but she did shout: “Always be independent!”

One must make choice between loving women and knowing them; there is no middle course.  

Pleasure can be supported by illusion, but happiness rests upon truth. Also:
Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.

Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another. 

(There are periods when) public opinion is the worst of (all) opinions.

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.

The tragic drama has the great moral drawback of attaching too high an importance to life and death.  

There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.

We justly consider women to be weaker than ourselves, and yet we are governed by them.

Weakness of character or lack of ideas, in a word all that can withhold (3) us from living a solitary life, are things that preserve (4) many a man from misanthropy.                                                                                                          (3) not give, keep back (retener); (4) protect from change (preservar)

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.