Desiderius Erasmus quotes - page 3

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)
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. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
Of how much more passion than reason has Jupiter composed us? putting in, as one would say, "scarce half an ounce to a pound." View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
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. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
We must learn how to imitate Cicero from Cicero himself. Let us imitate him as he imitated others. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
A speech comes alive only if it rises from the heart, not if it floats on the lips. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
A constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford pleasure to the participant. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
For we have in Latin only a few small streams and muddy puddles, while they have pure springs and rivers flowing in gold. I see that it is utter madness even to touch with the little finger that branch of theology that deals chiefly with the divine mysteries, unless one is also provided with the equipment of Greek. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
This world, the whole of the planet called earth, is the common country of all who live and breathe upon it. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down? View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party. (Desiderius Erasmus)
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. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things? View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
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. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
Read first the best books. The important thing for you is not how much you know, but the quality of what you know. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
Picture the prince, such as most of them are today a man ignorant of the law, well-nigh an enemy to his people's advantage, while intent on his personal convenience, a dedicated voluptuary, a hater of learning, freedom and truth, without a thought for the interests of his country, and measuring everything in terms of his own profit and desires. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place. (Desiderius Erasmus)
Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
Heaven grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
For them it's out-of-date and outmoded to perform miracles teaching the people is too like hard work, interpreting the holy scriptures is for schoolmen and praying is a waste of time to shed tears is weak and womanish, to be needy is degrading to suffer defeat is a disgrace and hardly fitting for one who scarcely permits the greatest of kings to kiss the toes of his sacred feet and finally, death is an unattractive prospect, and dying on a cross would be an ignominious end. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus