Desiderius Erasmus (1465-1536) Quotes

Fools are without number.

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

Ask a wise man to dinner and he'll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you'll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people's entertainment.

By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.

Don't give your advice before you are called upon.

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

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

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.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

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

It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.

Jupiter, not wanting man's 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.

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

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

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.

Prevention is better than cure.

Reflection is a flower of the mind, giving out wholesome fragrance; but revelry is the same flower, when rank and running to seed.

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.

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.

They take unbelievable pleasure in the hideous blast of the hunting horn and baying of the hounds. Dogs dung smells sweet as cinnamon to them. 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.

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

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.

Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.

Every definition is dangerous.

The chief happiness (for a man) is to be what he is.