Erasmus Quotes

For what is more foolish than for a man to study nothing else than how to please himself? To make himself the object of his own admiration? And yet, what is there that is either delightful or taking, nay rather what not the contrary, that a man does against the hair? Take away this salt of life, and the orator may even sit still with his action, the musician with all his division will be able to please no man, the player be hissed off the stage, the poet and all his Muses ridiculous, the painter with his art contemptible, and the physician with all his slip-slops go a-begging. Lastly, you will be taken for an ugly fellow instead of youthful, and a beast instead of a wise man, a child instead of eloquent, and instead of a well-bred man, a clown. So necessary a thing it is that everyone flatter himself and commend himself to himself before he can be commended by others.

dulce es la guerra para los que no la han experimentado.

Pico della Mirandola escribe hacia esta época su Discurso sobre la dignidad humana, en el que otorga al ser humano tanto la capacidad como la obligación de ser lo suficientemente noble para responder a la alta misión de llegar a comprender la unidad del cosmos en su divinidad.

For if by chance some woman wishes to be thought of as wise, she does nothing but show herself twice a fool.

Nothing can be called unhappy if it fulfils its own nature, unless you would conclude that a man ought to be pitied because he cannot fly about with the birds, and cannot run on four feet like the whole family of beasts, and is not armed with horns like a bull.

Bu dünyada tamamen yalnızım, çünkü hiçbir tarafın adamı olmadım ve Tanrı aklımı almadığı sürece de olmayacağım.

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

Next, let no one be so fond as to imagine, that I should so far stint my invention to the method of other pleaders, as first to define, and then divide my subject, i.e., myself. For it is equally hazardous to attempt the crowding her within the narrow limits of a definition, whose nature is of so diffusive an extent, or to mangle and disjoin that, to the adoration whereof all nations unitedly concur.

Again what city ever received Plato's or Aristotle's laws, or Socrates' precepts? But,

Nicht diejenigen haben die Bücher recht lieb, welche sie unberührt in ihren Schränken aufheben, sondern sie Tag und Nacht in den Händen haben, und daher beschmutzet sind, welche Eselsohren darein machen, sie abnutzen und mit Anmerkungen bedecken.

¿Quién no creerá que un rey es un hombre opulento y poderoso? Y, sin embargo, si no posee un alma dispuesta para el bien ni halla nada con qué saciar su ambición, puede considerársele como un pobre de solemnidad, y aun como un vil siervo, si por añadidura, está dominado por los vicios

I put up with this church, in the hope that one day it will become better, just as it is constrained to put up with me in the hope that I will become better.

Para el espíritu libre e independiente, que ni quiere atarse por ningún dogmani decidirse por ningún partido, en ninguna parte hay un hogar sobre la tierra”.

Jokes can be handled in such a way that any reader who is not altogether lacking in discernment can scent something far more rewarding in them than in the crabbed and specious arguments of some people we know.

Not that I would want anyone to be forcibly deprived of his goods, but some system should be operated to prevent the wealth of the many from being allocated to the few.