But, to return to my design, what power was it that drew those stony, oaken, and wild people into cities but flattery? For nothing else is signified … - Erasmus

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But, to return to my design, what power was it that drew those stony, oaken, and wild people into cities but flattery? For nothing else is signified by Amphion and Orpheus' harp. What was it that, when the common people of Rome were like to have destroyed all by their mutiny, reduced them to obedience? Was it a philosophical oration? Least. But a ridiculous and childish fable of the belly and the rest of the members. And as good success had Themistocles in his of the fox and hedgehog. What wise man's oration could ever have done so much with the people as Sertorius' invention of his white hind? Or his ridiculous emblem of pulling off a horse's tail hair by hair? Or as Lycurgus his example of his two whelps? To say nothing of Minos and Numa, both which ruled their foolish multitudes with fabulous inventions; with which kind of toys that great and powerful beast, the people, are led anyway.

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About Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (27 October 1466 – 12 July 1536) was a Dutch philosopher, humanist and theologian.

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Additional quotes by Erasmus

Stoacılara göre bilge olmak, aklı rehber almaktır; Deli olmak ise kendini tutkuların akışına bırakmaktır.

I myself once heard a great fool (a great scholar I would have said) undertaking in a laborious discourse to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity; in the unfolding whereof, that he might shew his wit and reading, and together satisfy itching ears, he proceeded in a new method, as by insisting on the letters, syllables, and proposition, on the concord of noun and verb, and that of noun substantive, and noun adjective; the auditors all wondered, and some mumbled to themselves that hemistich of Horace, Why all this needless trash?

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