Quotes By Desiderius 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?

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

Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.

Humility is truth.

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

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

Time takes away the grief of men.

Prevention is better than cure.

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.

Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.

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

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.

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.

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.

Fools are without number.

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.

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

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

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.

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.

The desire to write grows with writing.

Fortune favors the audacious.

Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known.

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

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.

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

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

Man is to man either a god or a wolf.