Desiderius Erasmus quotes

Desiderius Erasmus quotes


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







“Your library is your paradise.”
― Desiderius Erasmus






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





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


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


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





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






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








“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


tags: christianity, education, learning, religion, theology





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






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






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






“Bidden or unbidden, God is present.”
― 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






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






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






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






“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






“A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.”
― 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, Praise of Folly






“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






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








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






“Nicht die haben Bücher recht lieb, welche sie unberührt in den Schränken aufheben, sondern die, die sie Tag und Nacht in den Händen halten.”
― Desiderius Erasmus






“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.”
― Desiderius 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, 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, Praise of Folly






“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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus