Quotes by Desiderius Erasmus

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

Your library is your paradise.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

Prevention is better than cure.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

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.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Hope

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

Man is to man either a god or a wolf.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

To know nothing is the happiest life.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Life

No one respects a talent that is concealed.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

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?

— Desiderius Erasmus

Happiness

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.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

Fortune favors the audacious.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

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.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Hope

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Happiness

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

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.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Life

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

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

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom

Humility is truth.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Truth

Time takes away the grief of men.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Wisdom