Top 133 Quotes & Sayings by Desiderius Erasmus
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus.
Last updated on September 14, 2024.
Concealed talent brings no reputation.
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 the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.
Prevention is better than cure.
Don't give your advice before you are called upon.
Fools are without number.
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.
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.
Time takes away the grief of men.
What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.
Fortune favors the audacious.
To know nothing is the happiest life.
A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.
By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.
Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.
Humility is truth.
It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst.
Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.
Man is to man either a god or a wolf.
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
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.
The desire to write grows with writing.
Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly.
He who allows oppression shares the crime.
Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known.
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.
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him.
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.
Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.
Your library is your paradise.
It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.
The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
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?
Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.
A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.
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.
Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.
The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes.
It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence.
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.
No one respects a talent that is concealed.
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.
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.
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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.
War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.
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?
The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.
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.
War is sweet to those who haven't tasted it. Dulce bellum inexpertis.
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.
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?
The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth
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.
There is no joy in possession without sharing.
Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.
Read first the best books. The important thing for you is not how much you know, but the quality of what you know.
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