Quotes About Erasmus

Humans are survivors. They do things for themselves and then attempt to conceal their motivations through elaborate subterfuges. Gift-giving is a prime example of behavior that is secretly selfish. -Erasmus

At the same time, Europe's long-dead postal service was resumed. Now Erasmus could become a snail-mail junkie, using a stream of letters24 to unite a community of international eccentrics into a movement which downgraded religion's death ride to heaven and exalted earthly humanity. The moment was appropriate. For the first time since the rise of multicellularity, there was no longer just one global brain but two—one microbial, the other that of man- and womankind.

What Erasmus called ingratitudo vulgi, the ingratitude of the masses, is increasing in the age of globalization and the Internet.

He [Erasmus Darwin] used to say that 'unitarianism was a feather-bed to catch a falling Christian.

a flutter of wings rippling the fabric of the night. "Balastair!" chirps a voice. At first he thinks it's Cicero, but it's not, not at all—Cicero is still in the air, still chirping and screeching in alarm. "Erasmus," Balastair says with a small smile. "I've missed you.

As Erasmus, the great Renaissance thinker, reminds us, "The best hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth.

Erasmus says that you should praise a ruler even for qualities he does not have. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them.

The visitors then turned their attention to the universities, where it was decided that the learning of the scholastics and the medieval doctors should be abandoned in favour of the humanist learning approved by Erasmus and other reformers.

Era uno de esos pedantes que tanto abundaban a la sazón, siervos del paganismo resucitado, de quienes Erasmo se mofa porque sólo consideraban verdaderamente latinas las palabras que Cicerón incluyó en su léxico.

But the epitaph for which he has ever since been remembered was written by Erasmus, in the witty but savage dialogue "Julius Exclusus." That dialogue pictures Julius arriving at the gates of heaven on a great military charger and being rejected by St. Peter, who cannot be made to understand how the vicar of Christ could have turned from humility, service, and devoted spiritual life to warfare and diplomacy.

Here again Diatribe confidently brings in a gloss to suit herself, just as if Scripture were under her complete control. As for considering the prophet's meaning and intention, what need was there for a man of such authority to do that? All we need is: Erasmus says so, therefore it is so.

It was expected, however, that [Erasmus] should make some reply and give some definition. But instead, by availing himself of a rhetorical transition, he drags us who knew nothing of rhetoric away with him, as if the matter at issue here were of no moment, but simply a lot of quibbling, and dashes bravely out of the crowded court, crowned with ivy and laurel.

Memory, for Seneca as for Erasmus, was as much a crucible as a container. It was more than the sum of things remembered. It was something newly made, the essence of a unique self.