Pierre Charron Quotes

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

The true science and study of man is man.

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

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.

The shortest follies are the best. [Fr., Les plus courtes folies sont les meilleures.]

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. . . . God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

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.

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