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.

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.

The wedlocks of minds will be greater than that of bodies.

A good prince will tax as lightly as possible those commodities which are used by the poorest members of society: grain, bread, beer, wine, clothing, and all other staples without which human life could not exist.

From hence, no question, has sprung an observation ... confirmed now into a settled opinion, that some long experienced souls in the world, before their dislodging, arrive to the height of prophetic spirits.

Of two evils choose the least.

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

The Jewish usurers are fast-rooted even in the smallest villages, and if they lend five gulden they require a security of six times as much. They charge interest, upon interest, and upon this again interest, so that the poor man loses everything that he owns.

Concealed talent brings no reputation.

Time takes away the grief of men.

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.

Modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word.

Retain the wind by compressing the belly.

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.

Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.

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.

In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without me. People can't long tolerate a ruler, nor can a master his servant, a maid her mistress, a teacher his pupil, a friend his friend nor a wife her husband, a landlord his tenant, a soldier his comrade nor a party-goer his companion, unless they sometimes have illusions about each other, make use of flattery, and have the sense to turn a blind eye and sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly.

You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.

Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.

Do not put chewed bones back on plates. Instead, throw them on the floor for the dog.

The opinion formulated by the Church has more value in my eyes than human reasons, whatever they may be.

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.

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.

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.

...it is a sneaking piece of cowardice for authors to put feigned names to their works, as if, like bastards of their brain, they were afraid to own them.

Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?

Only a very few can be learned, but all can be Christian, all can be devout, and – I shall boldly add – all can be theologians.

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

To know nothing is the happiest life.

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

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

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

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.

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...

Invoked or not invoked, the god is present.

Fortune favours the audacious.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Frugality is a handsome income.

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

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

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.

He who shuns the millstone, shuns the meal.

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

War is delightful for those who don't know it

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.

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...

Eagles don't catch flies.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.