Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

Fortune favors the audacious.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Prevention is better than cure.

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

Your library is your paradise.

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?

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.

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

There are some whose only reason for inciting war is to use it as a means to exercise their tyranny over their subjects more easily. For in times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler doing what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few ... They demand as much money as they like. Why say more?

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

It is a greater advantage to be honestly educated than honorably born.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

There is no joy in possession without sharing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.

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.