28 Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

Length of life should be measured not by the number of years but by the number of right actions.

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

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

No one is to be despaired of as long as he breathes. (While there is life there is hope.)

Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.

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

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.

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.

Indeed, I disagree very much with those who are unwilling that Holy Scripture, translated into the vulgar tongue, be read by the uneducated, as if Christ taught such intricate doctrines that they could scarcely be understood by very few theologians, or as if the strength of the Christian religion consisted in men's ignorance of it.

Humility is truth.

Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin. Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.

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

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.

In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king.

Fools are without number.

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

Fortune favors the audacious.

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?

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

Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly.

Concealed talent brings no reputation.

Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

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.

Your library is your paradise.

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

He who allows oppression shares the crime.