Quotes from book
The Praise of Folly

Name: The Praise of Folly
Author: Desiderius Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus Original title Moriae Encomium, sive Stultitiae Laus (Latin, 1511)

In Praise of Folly, also translated as The Praise of Folly , is an essay written in Latin in 1509 by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and first printed in June 1511. Inspired by previous works of the Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli De Triumpho Stultitiae, it is a satirical attack on superstitions and other traditions of European society as well as on the Western Church.

“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)

“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)

“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)
The Praise of Folly (1511)