Born Sébastien-Roch Nicolas in Clermont-Ferrand in 1741, Chamfort made his name as a playwright and salon wit before the Revolution swept him up — he served as secretary to Louis XVI’s sister Madame Élisabeth, then, improbably, as secretary of the Jacobin club. He died in Paris in April 1794, and his reputation rests almost entirely on what he never published: the notebooks of epigrams gathered after his death as Maximes et Pensées, which John Stuart Mill admired and Sainte-Beuve compared to well-minted coins that retain their value. He was a professional compressor of ideas — which is exactly why a line of his survives two centuries later with somebody else’s face attached to it.