Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Our determination to imitiate Christ should be such that we have no time for other matters.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

[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.

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.

No one respects a talent that is concealed.

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

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.