Desiderius Erasmus Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Desiderius Erasmus:
No one respects a talent that is concealed.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Fortune favors the audacious.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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
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Prevention is better than cure.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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The desire to write grows with writing.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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
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To know nothing is the happiest life.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Man is to man either a god or a wolf.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Don't give your advice before you are called upon.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Time takes away the grief of men.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Your library is your paradise.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Concealed talent brings no reputation.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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
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It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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
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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
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The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Fools are without number.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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
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War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Humility is truth.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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He who allows oppression shares the crime.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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
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It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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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?
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
~Desiderius Erasmus
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