Quotes from Desiderius Erasmus


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Man is to man either a god or a wolf.


To know nothing is the happiest life.


The desire to write grows with writing.


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


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


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.


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


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.


Fortune favors the audacious.


Time takes away the grief of men.


What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?


Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.


He who allows oppression shares the crime.


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.


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


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.


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


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.


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


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