Erasmus > Quotes

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Your library is your paradise.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“The desire to write grows with writing.”
― Erasmus

“The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.”
― Erasmus, Praise of Folly

“He who allows oppression shares the crime.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.”
― Erasmus

“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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“‎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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“For anyone who loves intensely lives not in himself but in the object of his love, and the further he can move out of himself into his love, the happier he is.”
― Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

“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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Adagia. Lateinisch / Deutsch

“Bidden or unbidden, God is present.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly.”
― Erasmus

“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?”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“Just as nothing is more foolish than misplaced wisdom, so too, nothing is more imprudent than perverse prudence. And surely it is perverse not to adapt yourself to the prevailing circumstances, to refuse 'to do as the Romans do,' to ignore the party-goer's maxium 'take a drink or take your leave,' to insist that the play should not be a play. True prudence, on the other hand, recognizes human limitations and does not strive to leap beyond them; it is willing to run with the herd, to overlook faults tolerantly or to share them in a friendly spirit. But, they say, that is exactly what we mean by folly. (I will hardly deny it -- as long as they will reciprocate by admitting that this is exactly what is means to perform the play of life.)”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus , Praise of Folly

“A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.”
― Erasmus Roterdamus

“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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Erasmus

“Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“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.”
― Erasmus

“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...”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Praise of Folly

“...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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Praise of Folly