Love as it exists in society is merely the mingling of two fantasies and the contact of two skins.

Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort (1741–1794) was a French moralist and aphorist whose sharp maxims dissected manners, self-interest, and the illusions of polite society on the eve of the French Revolution. Moving in salon culture and later aligning himself with revolutionary politics, he became known for a skeptical, often caustic view of social conventions. This remark belongs to the tradition of French moralistes (La Rochefoucauld, etc.), treating “love” less as an idealized sentiment than as a social performance shaped by vanity, imagination, and physical desire—an outlook consistent with Chamfort’s broader critique of hypocrisy and self-deception in fashionable life.

Chamfort reduces “love in society” to two components: fantasy and flesh. The “mingling of two fantasies” suggests that lovers often fall in love with imagined versions of one another—projections, roles, and flattering narratives—rather than with the real person. The “contact of two skins” strips romance down to bodily appetite, implying that what passes for love is frequently a blend of illusion and sensuality. The sting of the aphorism lies in its social target: in a world governed by appearances, love becomes another form of mutual self-deception, briefly sustained by desire and the imagination’s need to embellish.