Quotes By 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.

The desire to write grows with writing.

Fortune favors the audacious.

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

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

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.

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

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

Your library is your paradise.

Man is to man either a god or a wolf.

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.

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

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

No one respects a talent that is concealed.

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

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

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

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?

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

War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.

To know nothing is the happiest life.

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.

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.

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

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

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

Concealed talent brings no reputation.

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.

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?