Desiderius Erasmus Quotes (76 Quotes)

By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him.

In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king.

No one respects a talent that is concealed.

Ask a wise man to dinner and he'll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you'll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people's entertainment.

Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.

Man is to man either a god or a wolf.

Picture the prince, such as most of them are today a man ignorant of the law, well-nigh an enemy to his people's advantage, while intent on his personal convenience, a dedicated voluptuary, a hater of learning, freedom and truth, without a thought for the interests of his country, and measuring everything in terms of his own profit and desires.

Everyone knows that by far the happiest and universally enjoyable age of man is the first. What is there about babies which makes us hug and kiss and fondle them, so that even an enemy would give them help at that age?

What passes out of ones mouth passes into a hundred ears. It is a great misfortune not to have sense enough to speak well.

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

A peck of troubles.

Read first the best books. The important thing for you is not how much you know, but the quality of what you know.

Concealed talent brings no reputation.

(Only by) the good influence of our conduct may we bring salvation in human affairs or like a fatal comet we may bring destruction in our train

I have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors after that, I shall buy clothes.

Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.

Before supper take a little walk, after supper do the same.

For them it's out-of-date and outmoded to perform miracles teaching the people is too like hard work, interpreting the holy scriptures is for schoolmen and praying is a waste of time to shed tears is weak and womanish, to be needy is degrading to suffer defeat is a disgrace and hardly fitting for one who scarcely permits the greatest of kings to kiss the toes of his sacred feet and finally, death is an unattractive prospect, and dying on a cross would be an ignominious end.

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.

Reflection is a flower of the mind, giving out wholesome fragrance; but revelry is the same flower, when rank and running to seed.

A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

Fortune favors the audacious.

It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence.

People who use their erudition to write for a learned minority... don't seem to me favored by fortune but rather to be pitied for their continuous self-torture. They add, change, remove, lay aside, take up, rephrase, show to their friends, keep for nine years and are never satisfied. And their futile reward, a word of praise from a handful of people, they win at such a cost -- so many late nights, such loss of sleep, sweetest of all things, and so much sweat and anguish... their health deteriorates, their looks are destroyed, they suffer partial or total blindness, poverty, ill-will, denial of pleasure, premature old age and early death.

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

They take unbelievable pleasure in the hideous blast of the hunting horn and baying of the hounds. Dogs dung smells sweet as cinnamon to them.

War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.

What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known.

Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.

You'll see certain Pythagorean whose belief in communism of property goes to such lengths that they pick up anything lying about unguarded, and make off with it without a qualm of conscience as if it had come to them by law.

This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.

Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.

Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly.

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Jupiter, not wanting man's life to be wholly gloomy and grim, has bestowed far more passion than reason you could reckon the ration as twenty-four to one. Moreover, he confined reason to a cramped corner of the head and left all the rest of the body to the passions.

It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst.

Heaven grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance.

Prevention is better than cure.

The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes.

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.

Your library is your paradise.

Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.

Don't give your advice before you are called upon.