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@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.”

Desiderius Erasmus book The Praise of Folly

The Praise of Folly (1511)

“Animals only follow their natural instincts; but man, unless he has experienced the influence of learning and philosophy, is at the mercy of impulses that are worse than those of a wild beast. There is no beast more savage and dangerous than a human being who is swept along by the passions of ambition, greed, anger, envy, extravagance, and sensuality.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis declamatio (1529), translated by Beert C. Verstraete as On Education for Children, in The Erasmus Reader (University of Toronto Press: 1990), p. 73

“Of how much more passion than reason has Jupiter composed us? putting in, as one would say, "scarce half an ounce to a pound."”

Desiderius Erasmus book The Praise of Folly

The Praise of Folly (1511)

“The world thought well of my schoolmaster guardian, because he was neither a liar, nor a scamp, nor a gambler; but he was coarse, avaricious, and ignorant; he knew nothing beyond the confused lessons which he taught to his classes. He imagined that in forcing a youth to become a monk he would be offering a sacrifice acceptable to God. He used to boast of the many victims which he devoted annually to Dominic and Francis and Benedict.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

As quoted in Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4 (1899) by James Anthony Froude

“You venerate the saints, and you take pleasure in touching their relics. But you disregard their greatest legacy, the example of a blameless life. No devotion is more pleasing to Mary than the imitation of Mary's humility. No devotion is more acceptable and proper to the saints than striving to imitate their virtues.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 144.
Handbook of the Christian Soldier (1503)

“Most Christians are superstitious rather than pious, and except for the name of Christ differ hardly at all from superstitious pagans.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

The Erasmus Reader (1990), pp. 140-141.
Handbook of the Christian Soldier (1503)

“There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

As quoted in Thomas More and Erasmus (1965) by Ernest Edwin Reynolds, p. 248

“He that gives quickly gives twice.”

Desiderius Erasmus book Adagia

Adagia (1508)

“It might be wiser for me to avoid Camarina and say nothing of theologians. They are a proud, susceptible race. They will smother me under six hundred dogmas. They will call me heretic and bring thunderbolts out of their arsenals, where they keep whole magazines of them for their enemies. Still they are Folly's servants, though they disown their mistress. They live in the third heaven, adoring their own persons and disdaining the poor crawlers upon earth. They are surrounded with a bodyguard of definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit, and propositions implicit. …They will tell you how the world was created. They will show you the crack where Sin crept in and corrupted mankind.”

Desiderius Erasmus book The Praise of Folly

as quoted by James Anthony Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4 http://books.google.com/books?id=5tB4L4J9hlYC (1899) <br class="br">The Praise of Folly (1511)

“In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”
In regione caecorum rex est luscus.

Desiderius Erasmus book Adagia

Adagia (first published 1500, with numerous expanded editions through 1536), III, IV, 96
Also in the same passage of the Adagia is a variant: Inter caecos regnat strabus (Among the blind, the squinter rules).

“Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 115

“No Man is wise at all Times, or is without his blind Side.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

The Alchymyst, in Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14031/14031.txt

“I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

Letter to an unidentified friend (1489), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 58

“Whatever you see in the more material part of yourself, learn to refer to God and to the invisible part of yourself. In that way, whatever offers itself to the senses will become for you an occasion for the practice of piety.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 141.
Handbook of the Christian Soldier (1503)

“You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 114

“I am a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

As quoted in Erasmus (1970) by György Faludy, p. 197

“I have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes.”
Ad Graecas literas totum animum applicui; statimque ut pecuniam accepero, Graecos primum autores, deinde vestes emam.

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

Letter to Jacob Batt (12 April 1500); Collected Works of Erasmus Vol 1 (1974)
Variant translation: When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

“I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni (1523), § 176, As quoted in Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1900) by Ephraim Emerton, p. 377
Variant: I am a lover of liberty. I cannot and will not serve parties.

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

Desiderius Erasmus book Adagia

Adagia (1508)

“For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?”

Desiderius Erasmus book The Praise of Folly

The Praise of Folly (1511)