Quotes from Desiderius Erasmus

The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes.

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

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

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?

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

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

It is folly alone that stays the fugue of Youth and beats off louring Old Age.

When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.

[I]t is a sneaking piece of cowardice for Authors to put feigned names to their works, as if like Bastards of their Brain they were afraid to own them.

[N]o party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

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

Humility is truth.

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

The desire to write grows with writing.

Apothegms are in history, the same as pearls in the sand, or gold in the mine.

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

Besides, it happens (how, I cannot tell) that an idea launched like a javelin in proverbial form strikes with sharper point on the hearer's mind and leaves implanted barbs for meditation...

Your library is your paradise.

War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.

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.

Time takes away the grief of men.

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.

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

So our student will flit like a busy bee through the entire garden of literature, light on every blossom, collect a little nectar from each, and carry it to his hive...