Desiderius Erasmus Quotes - Page 3

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• Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Book, Library, Guilty

  Desiderius Erasmus (1974). “The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1 to 141, 1484-1500”, p.115, University of Toronto Press

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• By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Book, Men, Mind

  27 Copy quote

• The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Degrees, Bliss, Form

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• Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Winning, Men, Self

  Desiderius Erasmus (1986). “Literary and Educational Writings: Panegyricus and Philippum Austriaeducem. Moriae encomium. Dialogus Julius exclusus e coelis. Institutio principis christiani. Querela pacis”

  36 Copy quote

• Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Encounters, Looks, Christianity

  "Erasmus of Rotterdam". Book by Stefan Zweig translated by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul, 1934.

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• Love that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health is short-lived.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Love, Good Health, Short Lived

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• 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.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Men, Differences, People

  96 Copy quote

• To know nothing is the happiest life.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Life, Inspire, Live By

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• The desire to write grows with writing.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Writing, Desire, Great Writing

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• Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Eye, Rocks, Self

  54 Copy quote

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

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Ignorance, Orthodoxy, Heresy

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• What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Missing You, Plato, Real

  Desiderius Erasmus (1986). “Literary and Educational Writings: Panegyricus and Philippum Austriaeducem. Moriae encomium. Dialogus Julius exclusus e coelis. Institutio principis christiani. Querela pacis”

  37 Copy quote

• It seems to me to be the best proof of an evangelical disposition, that persons are not angry when reproached, and have a Christian charity for those that ill deserve it.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Christian, Charity, Being The Best

  Desiderius Erasmus (1733). “All the Familiar Colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus, of Roterdam, Concerning Men, Manners, and Things”, p.532

  24 Copy quote

• The Jewish usurers are fast-rooted even in the smallest villages, and if they lend five gulden they require a security of six times as much. They charge interest, upon interest, and upon this again interest, so that the poor man loses everything that he owns.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Men, Village, Six

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

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Gold, Pearls, Sand

  20 Copy quote

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

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Running, Flower, Reflection

  67 Copy quote

• Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Body, Shapes, Plant

  8 Copy quote

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

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Peace, Military, War

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• Of two evils choose the least.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Two, Evil, Two Evils

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• Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Hate, Prodigies, Shoulders

  Desiderius Erasmus (1986). “Literary and Educational Writings: Panegyricus and Philippum Austriaeducem. Moriae encomium. Dialogus Julius exclusus e coelis. Institutio principis christiani. Querela pacis”

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  Prayer, Heaven, May

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• As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Life, Wise, Laughter

  53 Copy quote

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

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Powerful, Doctors, Ignorant

  Desiderius Erasmus, Betty Radice (1990). “Praise of Folly”

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• Man is to man either a god or a wolf.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Men

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• 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

  Art, Thinking, Jewels

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