Quotes by Desiderius Erasmus

“To know nothing is the happiest life”

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

“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”

“The desire to write grows with writing.”

“Beware lest clamor be taken for counsel.”

“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.”

“What difference is there, do you think, between those in Platos cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and dont know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?”

“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.”

“Ask a wise man to dinner and hell upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and youll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the peoples entertainment.”

“No one respects a talent that is concealed.”

“Jupiter, not wanting mans life to be wholly gloomy and grim, has bestowed far more passion than reason /you could reckon the ration as twenty-four to one. Moreover, he confined reason to a cramped corner of the head and left all the rest of the body to the passions.”

“By burning Luthers books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid mens minds of him”

“A good prince will tax as lightly as possible those commodities which are used by the poorest members of society: grain, bread, beer, wine, clothing, and all other staples without which human life could not exist”

“He who shuns the millstone, shuns the meal”

“Fortune favors the audacious”

“A man must hug, and dandle, and kistle, and play a hundred little tricks with his bed-fellow when he is disposed to make that use of her that nature designed her for”

“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 isnt --its human.”

“Mans mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.”

“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?”

“Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as mens judgments of one another.”