Quotes By 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

Time takes away the grief of men.

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

Your library is your paradise.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.