|
|  Famous
Erasmus Quotes |
| Home |  | Quotes | | Biographies | | Free Essays and Articles | | Discussion Forum |
Home » Free Famous Philosopher Quotes » Desiderius Erasmus
Erasmus is famous for having said the following quotes:
If you are having trouble finding a particular Desiderius Erasmus quote, try control + F.
The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is
the best of all.
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.
Erasmus
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?
Erasmus
When
I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
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.
Erasmus
Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments
of one another.
Erasmus
Man's mind is so formed that it is far more
susceptible to falsehood than to truth.
Erasmus
The more ignorant,
reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst
powerful princes.
Erasmus
Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth,
pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.
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.
Erasmus
What is popularly
called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.
Erasmus
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.
Erasmus
In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without me.
People can't long tolerate a ruler, nor can a master his servant, a maid her mistress,
a teacher his pupil, a friend his friend nor a wife her husband, a landlord his
tenant, a soldier his comrade nor a party-goer his companion, unless they sometimes
have illusions about each other, make use of flattery, and have the sense to turn
a blind eye and sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly.
Erasmus
Fools are without number.
Erasmus
Everybody hates a prodigy,
detests an old head on young shoulders.
Erasmus
Time takes away the
grief of men.
Erasmus
A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is
overcome by habit.
Erasmus
It is the chiefest point of happiness that
a man is willing to be what he is.
Erasmus
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.
Erasmus
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.
Erasmus
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?
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. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane
because this happens to very few people.
Erasmus
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.
Erasmus
By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter
can mankind be remade.
Erasmus
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.
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.
Erasmus
Your library is your paradise.
Erasmus
Give light,
and the darkness will disappear of itself.
Erasmus
If you look at history
you'll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has
fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.
Erasmus
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.
Erasmus
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.
Erasmus
It
is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect
the worst.
Erasmus
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.
Erasmus
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.
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.
Erasmus
Heaven grant
that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance. [Prayer
To A Pregnant Woman]
Erasmus
Prevention is better than cure.
Erasmus
Picture the prince, such as most of them are today: a man ignorant of the
law, well-nigh an enemy to his people's advantage, while intent on his personal
convenience, a dedicated voluptuary, a hater of learning, freedom and truth, without
a thought for the interests of his country, and measuring everything in terms
of his own profit and desires.
Erasmus
People who use their erudition
to write for a learned minority... don't seem to me favored by fortune but rather
to be pitied for their continuous self-torture. They add, change, remove, lay
aside, take up, rephrase, show to their friends, keep for nine years and are never
satisfied. And their futile reward, a word of praise from a handful of people,
they win at such a cost -- so many late nights, such loss of sleep, sweetest of
all things, and so much sweat and anguish... their health deteriorates, their
looks are destroyed, they suffer partial or total blindness, poverty, ill-will,
denial of pleasure, premature old age and early death.
Erasmus
No one
respects a talent that is concealed.
Erasmus
Concealed talent brings
no reputation.
Erasmus
It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians
to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.
Erasmus
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
Erasmus
Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without
sin.
Some more Desiderius Erasmus quotes
- "In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king" (an arabian proverb is "The one-eyed person is a beauty in the country of the blind")
- "To know nothing is the happiest life"
- "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." (Currently used on one of Amazon's complimentary bookmarks.)
- [The above is the "urban myth" version. The real quote, in the original Latin from a letter to Jacob Batt, dated 12 April 1500 is, "Ad Graecas literas totum animum applicui; statimque, ut pecuniam accpero, Graecus primum autores, deinde vestes emam." In English, this reads, "I have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes." [Source: Collected Works of Erasmus, Vol 1, page 252. Toronto, University of Toronto Press 1974]
- "It is the friendship of books that has made me perfectly happy."
- "Believe that you have it, and you have it!"
- "War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it."
- "There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect."
- "I have no patience with those who say that sexual excitement is shameful and that venereal stimuli have their origin not in nature, but in sin. Nothing is so far from the truth. As if marriage, whose function cannot be fulfilled without these incitements, did not rise above blame. In other living creatures, where do these incitements come from? From nature or from sin? From nature, of course. It must borne in mind that in the apetites of the body there is very little difference between man and other living creatures. Finally, we defile by our imagination what of its own nature is fair and holy. If we were willing to evaluate things not according to the opinion of the crowd, but according to nature itself, how is it less repulsive to eat, chew, digest, evacuate, and sleep after the fashion of dumb animals, than to enjoy lawful and permitted carnal relations?" From De Conscribendis Epistolas
- "The rules of grammar are crabbed things to many persons...it is important early to instil a taste for the best things into the minds of children, and I cannot see that anything is learned with greater success than what is learned by playing, and this is, in truth, a very harmless kind of fraud, to trick a person into his own profit."
- "Indeed, a constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery" --Letter to Christian Northoff
- "I am a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger."
- "I am a lover of liberty. I cannot and will not serve parties."
- "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."
- "Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself." --Letter to Christian Northoff
- "For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?" --The Praise of Folly
- "They say that the AntiChrist will be born of a monk and a nun. If so, there must already be thousands of AntiChrists."
- "Education is of far greater importance than heredity in forming character."
- "Whenever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity."
If you know of any Erasmus quotes that are not currently on this page, please let us know at quotes (AT) philosophyparadise.com.