33 Quotes by Erasmus

The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.

Invite a wise man to a feast and he’ll spoil the company, either with morose silence or troublesome disputes. Take him out to dance, and you’ll swear “a cow would have done it better.

We are aliens in this visible world.

Power without goodness is unmitigated tyranny, and without wisdom it is destruction, not government.

Folly is the only thing that keeps youth at a stay and old age afar off;” as it is verified in the Brabanders, of whom there goes this common saying, “That age, which is wont to render other men wiser, makes them the greater fools.

Yet in the midst of all their prosperity, princes in this respect seem to me most unfortunate, because, having no one to tell them truth, they are forced to receive flatterers for friends.

Is there anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books? Even if, taken out one at a time, they offered something worth knowing, the very mass of them would be an impediment to learning from satiety if nothing else.

I do not like a child that is a man too soon.

When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes.