Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

“Your library is your paradise.”

— Desiderius 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.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“He who allows oppression shares the crime.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Bidden or unbidden, God is present.

— 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

“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.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“And what is all this life but a kind of comedy, wherein men walk up and down in one another's disguises and act their respective parts, till the property-man brings them back to the attiring house. And yet he often orders a different dress, and makes him that came but just now off in the robes of a king put on the rags of a beggar. Thus are all things represented by counterfeit, and yet without this there was no living.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Moreover God hath ordained man in this world, as it were, the very image of himself, to the intent, that he, as it were a god on earth, should provide for the wealth of all creatures.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Surely there is nothing so ungracious, nor nothing so cruel, but men will hold therewith, if it be once approved by custom.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“We being satiate with continual wars, let the desire of peace a little move us.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Man is to man either a god or a wolf.

— Desiderius Erasmus

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.

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“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.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“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.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

“The majority of the common people loathe war and pray for peace; only a handful of individuals, whose evil joys depend on general misery, desire war.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“War is sweet to those who haven't tasted it. Dulce bellum inexpertis.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“So our student will flit like a busy bee through the entire garden of literature, light on every blossom, collect a little nectar from each, and carry it to his hive ...”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Apothegms are in history, the same as pearls in the sand, or gold in the mine.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“They may attack me with an army of six hundred syllogisms; and if I do not recant, they will proclaim me a heretic.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Out of all those centuries the Greeks can count seven sages at the most, and if anyone looks at them more closely I swear he'll not find so much as a half-wise man or even a third of a wise man among them.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“You'll see certain Pythagorean whose belief in communism of property goes to such lengths that they pick up anything lying about unguarded, and make off with it without a qualm of conscience as if it had come to them by law.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Of two evils choose the least.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

Christians would show sense if they dispatched these argumentative Scotists and pigheaded Ockhamists and undefeated Albertists along with the whole regiment of Sophists to fight the Turks and Saracens instead of sending those armies of dull-witted soldiers with whom they've long been carrying on war with no result.

— Desiderius Erasmus

“What passes out of one's mouth passes into a hundred ears. It is a great misfortune not to have sense enough to speak well.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

Retain the wind by compressing the belly.

— Desiderius Erasmus

“God has administered to us of the present age, a bitter draught and a harsh physician, on account of our abounding infirmities.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Our determination to imitiate Christ should be such that we have no time for other matters.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“From hence, no question, has sprung an observation ... confirmed now into a settled opinion, that some long experienced souls in the world, before their dislodging, arrive to the height of prophetic spirits.”

— 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

I am a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger.

— Desiderius Erasmus

For them it's out-of-date and outmoded to perform miracles; teaching the people is too like hard work, interpreting the holy scriptures is for schoolmen and praying is a waste of time; to shed tears is weak and womanish, to be needy is degrading; to suffer defeat is a disgrace and hardly fitting for one who scarcely permits the greatest of kings to kiss the toes of his sacred feet; and finally, death is an unattractive prospect, and dying on a cross would be an ignominious end.

— Desiderius Erasmus

“Heaven grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance. Prayer To A Pregnant Woman”

— Desiderius Erasmus

Scarcely is there any peace so unjust that it is better than even the fairest war. -Vix ulla tam iniqua pax, quin bello vel aequissimo sit potior

— Desiderius Erasmus

“This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

It hardly needs explaining at length, I think, how much authority or beauty is added to style by the timely use of proverbs. In the first place who does not see what dignity they confer on style by their antiquity alone? ... And so to interweave adages deftly and appropriately is to make the language as a whole glitter with sparkles from Antiquity, please us with the colours of the art of rhetoric, gleam with jewel-like words of wisdom, and charm us with titbits of wit and humour.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Besides, it happens (how, I cannot tell) that an idea launched like a javelin in proverbial form strikes with sharper point on the hearer's mind and leaves implanted barbs for meditation ...

— Desiderius Erasmus