Wounds and hardships provoke our courage, and when our fortunes are at the lowest, our wits and minds are commonly at the best.
Pierre CharronAll religions are pieced together out of elements which seem so at odds with reason that any intelligence laughs at them.
Pierre CharronThe 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.
Pierre CharronWise men mingle mirth with their cares, as a help either to forget or overcome them; but to resort to intoxication for the ease of one's mind is to cure melancholy by madness.
Pierre CharronHe that boasts of his ancestors confesses that he has no virtue of his own. No person ever lived for our honor; nor ought that to be reputed ours, which was long before we had a being; for what advantage can it be to a blind man to know that his parents had good eyes? Does he see one whit the better?
Pierre Charron