He who tries to make his happiness depend too much on his reason, who holds it up for examination, who quibbles, as it were, with his delights, and admits no indelicate pleasures, ends by having none at all. He is a man who cards the wool of his mattress until nothing is left, and he ends by sleeping on the boards.
[Celui qui veut trop faire dépendre son bonheur de sa raison, qui le soumet à l’examen, qui chicane, pour ainsi dire, ses jouissances, et n’admet que des plaisirs délicats, finit par n’en plus avoir. C’est un homme qui, à force de faire carder son matelas, le voit diminuer, et finit par coucher sur la dure.]
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionée], Part 1 “Maxims and Thoughts [Maximes et Pensées],” ch. 2, ¶ 179 (1795) [tr. Merwin (1969)]
Sourcing, notes, alternate translations: wist.info/chamfort-nicolas/760…
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