Desiderius Erasmus
The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youthCollection: Education
Our determination to imitiate Christ should be such that we have no time for other matters.Collection: Time
The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.Collection: Elements
War is sweet to those who haven't tasted it. Dulce bellum inexpertis.Collection: Sweet
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.Collection: Country
There is no joy in possession without sharing.Collection: Change
Only a very few can be learned, but all can be Christian, all can be devout, and – I shall boldly add – all can be theologians.Collection: Christian
Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?Collection: Play
Sacred scripture is of course the basic authority for everything; yet I sometimes run across ancient sayings or pagan writings - even the poets - so purely and reverently and admirably expressed that I can't help believing the author's hearts were moved by some divine power. And perhaps the spirit of Christ is more widespread than we understand, and the company of the saints includes many not on our calendar.Collection: Running
Frugality is a handsome income.Collection: Income
I put up with this church, in the hope that one day it will become better, just as it is constrained to put up with me in the hope that I will become better.Collection: Church
The majority of the common people loathe war and pray for peace; only a handful of individuals, whose evil joys depend on general misery, desire war.Collection: War
What passes out of one's mouth passes into a hundred ears. It is a great misfortune not to have sense enough to speak well.Collection: Ears
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.Collection: Clothes
...it is a sneaking piece of cowardice for authors to put feigned names to their works, as if, like bastards of their brain, they were afraid to own them.Collection: Names
It is a greater advantage to be honestly educated than honorably born.Collection: Advantage
Many times what cannot be refuted by arguments can be parried by laughter.Collection: Laughter
Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.Collection: Sleep
He who doesn't sin, is the greatest sinner of all.Collection: Wise
At last concluded that no creature was more miserable than man, for that all other creatures are content with those bounds that nature set them, only man endeavors to exceed them.Collection: Men
Eagles don't catch flies.Collection: Strength
No Man is wise at all Times, or is without his blind Side.Collection: Wise
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.Collection: Knowledge
Love that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health is short-lived.Collection: Love
I am a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger.Collection: Citizens
Almost all Christians being wretchedly enslaved to blindness and ignorance, which the priests are so far from preventing or removing, that they blacken the darkness, and promote the delusion: wisely foreseeing that the people (like cows, which never give down their milk so well as when they are gently stroked), would part with less if they knew more.Collection: Christian
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.Collection: Winning
Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.Collection: Encounters
There are some whose only reason for inciting war is to use it as a means to exercise their tyranny over their subjects more easily. For in times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler doing what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few ... They demand as much money as they like. Why say more?Collection: War
The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of follyCollection: Degrees
The Jewish usurers are fast-rooted even in the smallest villages, and if they lend five gulden they require a security of six times as much. They charge interest, upon interest, and upon this again interest, so that the poor man loses everything that he owns.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Eye
Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.Collection: Book
It seems to me to be the best proof of an evangelical disposition, that persons are not angry when reproached, and have a Christian charity for those that ill deserve it.Collection: Christian
There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.Collection: Sects
Of two evils choose the least.Collection: Two
Apothegms are in history, the same as pearls in the sand, or gold in the mine.Collection: Gold
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.Collection: Life
By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.Collection: Ignorance
Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them.Collection: Body
Heaven grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance. Prayer To A Pregnant WomanCollection: Prayer
Ask a wise man to dinner and he'll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you'll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people's entertainment.Collection: Wise
The wedlocks of minds will be greater than that of bodies.Collection: Mind
Given a choice between a folly and a sacrament, one should always choose the folly—because we know a sacrament will not bring us closer to god and there’s always the chance that a folly will.Collection: Choices
You'll see certain Pythagorean whose belief in communism of property goes to such lengths that they pick up anything lying about unguarded, and make off with it without a qualm of conscience as if it had come to them by law.Collection: Lying
[N]o party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.Collection: Fun
It hardly needs explaining at length, I think, how much authority or beauty is added to style by the timely use of proverbs. In the first place who does not see what dignity they confer on style by their antiquity alone?... And so to interweave adages deftly and appropriately is to make the language as a whole glitter with sparkles from Antiquity, please us with the colours of the art of rhetoric, gleam with jewel-like words of wisdom, and charm us with titbits of wit and humour.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Kings
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.Collection: Education