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Quotes by Desiderius Erasmus

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Concealed talent brings no reputation.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Don't give your advice before you are called upon.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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?
– Desiderius Erasmus
Fools are without number.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.
– Desiderius Erasmus
He who allows oppression shares the crime.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Heaven grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
If you look at history you'll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.
– Desiderius Erasmus
It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.
– Desiderius Erasmus
It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst.
– Desiderius Erasmus
It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
No one respects a talent that is concealed.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Prevention is better than cure.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Reflection is a flower of the mind, giving out wholesome fragrance; but revelry is the same flower, when rank and running to seed.
– Desiderius Erasmus
The desire to write grows with writing.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes.
– Desiderius Erasmus
The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Time takes away the grief of men.
– Desiderius Erasmus
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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?
– Desiderius Erasmus
What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.
– Desiderius Erasmus
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Your library is your paradise.
– Desiderius Erasmus
The pleasures which we most rarely experience give us the greatest delight.
– Desiderius Erasmus
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
[In regione caecorum rex est luscus.]
– Desiderius Erasmus
War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.
– Desiderius Erasmus
To know nothing is the happiest life.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Humility is truth.
– Desiderius Erasmus