Erasmus Quotes

...it is a sneaking piece of cowardice for authors to put feigned names to their works, as if, like bastards of their brain, they were afraid to own them.

Yet in the midst of all their prosperity, princes in this respect seem to me most unfortunate, because, having no one to tell them truth, they are forced to receive flatterers for friends.

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

It is wiser to treat men and things as though we held this world the common fatherland of all.

"But I am well aware of the excuse which men, ever ingenious in devising mischief to themselves as well as others, offer in extenuation of their conduct in going to war. They allege, that they are compelled to it; that they are dragged against their will to war. I answer them, deal fairly; pull off the mask; throw away all false colours; consult your own heart, and you will find that anger, ambition, and folly are the compulsory force that has dragged you to war, and not any necessity; unless indeed you call the insatiable cravings of a covetous mind, necessity" ` The Complaint of Peace

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

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

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, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford pleasure to the participant.

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.

Nicht die haben Bücher recht lieb, welche sie unberührt in den Schränken aufheben, sondern die, die sie Tag und Nacht in den Händen halten.

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.

The Stoics define wisdom to be conducted by reason, and folly nothing else but the being hurried by passion, lest our life should otherwise have been too dull and inactive, that creator, who out of clay first tempered and made us up, put into the composition of our humanity more than a pound of passions to an ounce of reason; and reason he confined within the narrow cells of the brain, whereas he left passions the whole body to
range in.

Farther, he set up two sturdy champions to stand
perpetually on guard, that reason might make no assault,
surprise, nor inroad ; anger, which keeps its station in
the fortress of the heart ; and lust, which like the signs
Virgo and Scorpio, rules the appetites and passions.

"Invite a wise man to a feast and he'll spoil the company, either with morose silence or troublesome disputes. Take him out to dance, and you'll swear "a cow would have done it better.

To know nothing is the happiest life.

Dve smetnje, uglavnom, ne dopuštaju čoveku da dođe do saznanja: stid kojim se zaslepljuje duh i strah koji u svemu vidi opasnost i obeshrabruje čoveka u njegovoj delatnosti. Ludost sjajno oslobađa svih tih teškoća. Mali broj ljudi zna koliko koristi i ugodnosti donosi preimućstvo da te nikad ničega nije stid i da te nikad nije strah!