Quotes by Desiderius Erasmus

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

"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."

"He who allows oppression shares the crime."

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

"Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth."

"Humility is truth."

"Your library is your paradise."

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

"Fortune favors the audacious."

"No one respects a talent that is concealed."

"To know nothing is the happiest life."

"Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself."

"Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another."

"It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst."

"Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin."

"War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it."

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

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

"War is sweet to those who have not experienced it."

"The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war."

"Time takes away the grief of men."

"The nearer people approach old age the closer they return to a semblance of childhood, until the time comes for them to depart this life, again like children, neither tired of living nor aware of death."

"Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly."

"Reflection is a flower of the mind, giving out wholesome fragrance; but revelry is the same flower, when rank and running to seed."

"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."

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

"The desire to write grows with writing."

"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."

"Prevention is better than cure."

"Man is to man either a god or a wolf."

"Nowadays the rage for possession has got to such a pitch that there is nothing in the realm of nature, whether sacred or profane, out of which profit cannot be squeezed."

"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."

"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?"

"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."