Desiderius Erasmus Quotations

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

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

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

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.

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

The entire world is my temple, and a very fine one too, if I'm not mistaken, and I'll never lack priests to serve it as long as there are men.

Man is to man either a god or a wolf.

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?

It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human.

By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.

Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another s.

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

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

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

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

I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.

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

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

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

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.

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

No one respects a talent that is concealed.

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

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

War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.

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

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

Nowadays the rage for possession has got to such a pitch that there is nothing in the realm of nature, whether sacred or profane, out of which profit cannot be squeezed.

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

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

What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.

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

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

The nearer people approach old age the closer they return to a semblance of childhood, until the time comes for them to depart this life, again like children, neither tired of living nor aware of death.

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?

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.

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

There is no joy in possession without sharing.

Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.

War is sweet to those who haven't tasted it. Dulce bellum inexpertis.

The majority of the common people loathe war and pray for peace; only a handful of individuals, whose evil joys depend on general misery, desire war.

The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.

Fortune favors the audacious.

The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth

At last concluded that no creature was more miserable than man, for that all other creatures are content with those bounds that nature set them, only man endeavors to exceed them.

I put up with this church, in the hope that one day it will become better, just as it is constrained to put up with me in the hope that I will become better.

Fools are without number.

It seems to me to be the best proof of an evangelical disposition, that persons are not angry when reproached, and have a Christian charity for those that ill deserve it.

Your library is your paradise.

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.

Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.

Prevention is better than cure.

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.

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

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.

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.

Be careful not to be the first to put your hands in the dish. What you cannot hold in your hands you must put on your plate. Also it is a great breach of etiquette when your fingers are dirty and greasy, to bring them to your mouth in order to lick them, or to clean them on your jacket. It would be more decent to use the tablecloth.

So our student will flit like a busy bee through the entire garden of literature, light on every blossom, collect a little nectar from each, and carry it to his hive...

Providence has decreed that those common acquisitions, money, gems, plate, noble mansions, and dominion, should be sometimes bestowed on the indolent and unworthy; but those things which constitute our true riches, and which are properly our own, must be procured by our own labor.

There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.

Bidden or unbidden, God is present.

Apothegms are in history, the same as pearls in the sand, or gold in the mine.

[N]o party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

The desire to write grows with writing.

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

[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.

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.

They may attack me with an army of six hundred syllogisms; and if I do not recant, they will proclaim me a heretic.

I am a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger.

Out of all those centuries the Greeks can count seven sages at the most, and if anyone looks at them more closely I swear he'll not find so much as a half-wise man or even a third of a wise man among them.

Dulce bellum inexpertis. - War is lovely for those who know nothing about it.

Christians would show sense if they dispatched these argumentative Scotists and pigheaded Ockhamists and undefeated Albertists along with the whole regiment of Sophists to fight the Turks and Saracens instead of sending those armies of dull-witted soldiers with whom they've long been carrying on war with no result.

Scarcely is there any peace so unjust that it is better than even the fairest war. -Vix ulla tam iniqua pax, quin bello vel aequissimo sit potior

The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly

Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. This was the sound conclusion of the Academic sceptics, who were the least surly of philosophers.

They are looking in utter darkness for that which has no existence whatsoever.

Eagles don't catch flies.

Besides, it happens (how, I cannot tell) that an idea launched like a javelin in proverbial form strikes with sharper point on the hearer’s mind and leaves implanted barbs for meditation...

It hardly needs explaining at length, I think, how much authority or beauty is added to style by the timely use of proverbs. In the first place who does not see what dignity they confer on style by their antiquity alone?... And so to interweave adages deftly and appropriately is to make the language as a whole glitter with sparkles from Antiquity, please us with the colours of the art of rhetoric, gleam with jewel-like words of wisdom, and charm us with titbits of wit and humour.

War is delightful for those who don't know it

It is folly alone that stays the fugue of Youth and beats off touring Old Age.

He who shuns the millstone, shuns the meal.

Sacred scripture is of course the basic authority for everything; yet I sometimes run across ancient sayings or pagan writings - even the poets - so purely and reverently and admirably expressed that I can't help believing the author's hearts were moved by some divine power. And perhaps the spirit of Christ is more widespread than we understand, and the company of the saints includes many not on our calendar.

Heaven grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance. Prayer To A Pregnant Woman

Love that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health is short-lived.

Frugality is a handsome income.

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.

Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them.

God has administered to us of the present age, a bitter draught and a harsh physician, on account of our abounding infirmities.

'Tis an easier matter to raise the devil than to lay him.

Given a choice between a folly and a sacrament, one should always choose the folly—because we know a sacrament will not bring us closer to god and there’s always the chance that a folly will.

By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.

Many times what cannot be refuted by arguments can be parried by laughter.

Fortune favours the audacious.

Invoked or not invoked, the god is present.

Almost all Christians being wretchedly enslaved to blindness and ignorance, which the priests are so far from preventing or removing, that they blacken the darkness, and promote the delusion: wisely foreseeing that the people (like cows, which never give down their milk so well as when they are gently stroked), would part with less if they knew more...

I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.

He who doesn't sin, is the greatest sinner of all.

No Man is wise at all Times, or is without his blind Side.