“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.”
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
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Desiderius Erasmus 36
Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian 1466–1536Related quotes
30 August 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)
“To be able to laugh and to be merciful are the only things that make man better than the beast”
Christian Nestell Bovee, in Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 124
Misattributed
Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 124.
The Satanic Bible (1969)
The Art of Loving (1956)
Context: Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion.
Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.
Source: Politics