Pierre Charron quotes

Pierre Charron was a French Catholic philosopher and theologian, noted for his influential works on skepticism and morality. His book "De la sagesse" became a cornerstone of French Renaissance thought and inspired later philosophers. He contributed significantly to the development of modern philosophical ideas about doubt and human wisdom. Here are 9 of his quotes:

Despair is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head.

Pierre Charron

God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

Pierre Charron

Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite are contrived to be constant companions.

Pierre Charron

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practiced, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good.

Pierre Charron

The easiest way to be cheated is to believe yourself to be more cunning than others.

Pierre Charron

He who receives a benefit should never forget it; he who bestow should never remember it.

Pierre Charron

The advice of friends must be received with a judicious reserve; we must not give ourselves up to it and follow it blindly, whether right or wrong.

Pierre Charron

All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man's reason, that any strong and vigorous intelligence laughs at them; but others are so noble, illustrious, miraculous, and mysterious that the intellect can make no sense of them and finds them unpalatable.

Pierre Charron