Top 30 Erasmus Quotes (2024 Update)

Erasmus Quote: “A life without books is unlivable.”

1. “A life without books is unlivable.”

Erasmus Quote: “Power without goodness is unmitigated tyranny, and without wisdom it is destruction, not government.”

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

Erasmus Quote: “We are aliens in this visible world.”

3. “We are aliens in this visible world.”

Erasmus Quote: “Dulce bellum inexpertis.”

4. “Dulce bellum inexpertis.”

Erasmus Quote: “The desire to write grows with writing.”

5. “The desire to write grows with writing.”

Erasmus Quote: “Ego mundi civis esse cupio, communis omnium, vel peregrinus magis.”

6. “Ego mundi civis esse cupio, communis omnium, vel peregrinus magis.”

Erasmus Quote: “The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.”

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

Erasmus Quote: “La gente cree que equivocarse es una desgracia; pero es mucho mayor no equivocarse.”

8. “La gente cree que equivocarse es una desgracia; pero es mucho mayor no equivocarse.”

Erasmus Quote: “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.”

9. “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.”

Erasmus Quote: “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.”

10. “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.”

Erasmus Quote: “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.”

11. “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.”

Erasmus Quote: “Folly is the only thing that keeps youth at a stay and old age afar off;.”

12. “Folly is the only thing that keeps youth at a stay and old age afar off;.”

Erasmus Quote: “This is a new one of my own making: I hate a man that remembers what he hears. Wherefore farewell, clap your hands, live and drink lustily, my most excellent disciples of Folly.”

13. “This is a new one of my own making: I hate a man that remembers what he hears. Wherefore farewell, clap your hands, live and drink lustily, my most excellent disciples of Folly.”

Erasmus Quote: “Do but observe our grim philosophers that are perpetually beating their brains on knotty subjects, and for the most part you’ll find them grown old before they are scarcely young. And.”

14. “Do but observe our grim philosophers that are perpetually beating their brains on knotty subjects, and for the most part you’ll find them grown old before they are scarcely young. And.”

Erasmus Quote: “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.”

15. “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.”

Erasmus Quote: “I hear the philosophers opposing it and saying ’tis a miserable thing for a man to be foolish, to err, mistake, and know nothing truly. Nay rather, this is to be a man. And why they should call it miserable, I see no reason; forasmuch as we are so born, so bred, so instructed, nay such is the common condition of us all.”

16. “I hear the philosophers opposing it and saying ’tis a miserable thing for a man to be foolish, to err, mistake, and know nothing truly. Nay rather, this is to be a man. And why they should call it miserable, I see no reason; forasmuch as we are so born, so bred, so instructed, nay such is the common condition of us all.”

Erasmus Quote: “I do not like a child that is a man too soon.”

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

Erasmus Quote: “Turn the pages of history and you will always find the morality of an age reflecting the life of its prince.”

18. “Turn the pages of history and you will always find the morality of an age reflecting the life of its prince.”

Erasmus Quote: “When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes.”

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

Erasmus Quote: “But who are they that for no other reason but that they were weary of life have hastened their own fate? Were they not the next neighbors to wisdom? among whom, to say nothing of Diogenes, Xenocrates, Cato, Cassius, Brutus, that wise man Chiron, being offered immortality, chose rather to die than be troubled with the same thing always.”

20. “But who are they that for no other reason but that they were weary of life have hastened their own fate? Were they not the next neighbors to wisdom? among whom, to say nothing of Diogenes, Xenocrates, Cato, Cassius, Brutus, that wise man Chiron, being offered immortality, chose rather to die than be troubled with the same thing always.”

Erasmus Quote: “A remarkable thing happens in the experience of my fools: from them not only true things, but even sharp reproaches, will be listened to; so that a statement which, if it came from a wise man’s mouth, might be a capital offense, coming from a fool gives rise to incredible delight. Veracity, you know, has a certain authentic power of giving pleasure, if nothing offensive goes with it; but this the gods have granted only to fools.”

21. “A remarkable thing happens in the experience of my fools: from them not only true things, but even sharp reproaches, will be listened to; so that a statement which, if it came from a wise man’s mouth, might be a capital offense, coming from a fool gives rise to incredible delight. Veracity, you know, has a certain authentic power of giving pleasure, if nothing offensive goes with it; but this the gods have granted only to fools.”

Erasmus Quote: “When Erasmus was accused of having “laid the egg that Luther hatched,” he acknowledged that he might have done so, but said he had expected quite another kind of a bird. Though he had criticized clerical abuses, he had never wanted to cause a rupture in the church, and he remained in its bosom till his death.”

22. “When Erasmus was accused of having “laid the egg that Luther hatched,” he acknowledged that he might have done so, but said he had expected quite another kind of a bird. Though he had criticized clerical abuses, he had never wanted to cause a rupture in the church, and he remained in its bosom till his death.”

Erasmus Quote: “It is the mark of a tyrant, indeed an underhand deception, to treat people at large the way that animal trainers customarily treat a wild beast; for their prime concern is to observe what pacifies it or what arouses it, and they provoke or soothe it to suit their own convenience.”

23. “It is the mark of a tyrant, indeed an underhand deception, to treat people at large the way that animal trainers customarily treat a wild beast; for their prime concern is to observe what pacifies it or what arouses it, and they provoke or soothe it to suit their own convenience.”

Erasmus Quote: “If a rock falls on your head, that is bad; but shame, infamy, opprobrium, and curses hurt only so far as they are felt.”

24. “If a rock falls on your head, that is bad; but shame, infamy, opprobrium, and curses hurt only so far as they are felt.”

Erasmus Quote: “It is not the office that brings honour to the man, but the man to the office.”

25. “It is not the office that brings honour to the man, but the man to the office.”

Erasmus Quote: “Priests are said in Scripture to devour the sins of the people; and they find sins so hard to digest that they must have the best wine to wash them down.”

26. “Priests are said in Scripture to devour the sins of the people; and they find sins so hard to digest that they must have the best wine to wash them down.”

Erasmus Quote: “Man is a godlike animal, and free twice over: once by nature, and again by his laws.”

27. “Man is a godlike animal, and free twice over: once by nature, and again by his laws.”

Erasmus Quote: “Nothing can be called unhappy if it fulfils its own nature, unless you would conclude that a man ought to be pitied because he cannot fly about with the birds, and cannot run on four feet like the whole family of beasts, and is not armed with horns like a bull.”

28. “Nothing can be called unhappy if it fulfils its own nature, unless you would conclude that a man ought to be pitied because he cannot fly about with the birds, and cannot run on four feet like the whole family of beasts, and is not armed with horns like a bull.”

Erasmus Quote: “It is the most deplorable tribute when the succession of an inferior ruler turns his predecessor, who was intolerable while he lived, into someone whose integrity and goodness are sadly missed.”

29. “It is the most deplorable tribute when the succession of an inferior ruler turns his predecessor, who was intolerable while he lived, into someone whose integrity and goodness are sadly missed.”

Erasmus Quote: “How fleeting, how brief, how fragile is the life of a man, and how subject to misfortune, assailed already by a multitude of diseases and accidents, buildings which collapse, shipwrecks, earthquakes, lightning! We do not need to add war to our woes, and yet it causes more woe than all the others.”

30. “How fleeting, how brief, how fragile is the life of a man, and how subject to misfortune, assailed already by a multitude of diseases and accidents, buildings which collapse, shipwrecks, earthquakes, lightning! We do not need to add war to our woes, and yet it causes more woe than all the others.”

Erasmus Quote: “What is a mistake in other people is a crime in the prince.”

31. “What is a mistake in other people is a crime in the prince.”

Erasmus Quote: “And therefore suppose that Plato dreamed of somewhat like it when he called the madness of lovers the most happy condition of all others. For he that’s violently in love lives not in his own body but in the thing he loves; and by how much the farther he runs from himself into another, by so much the greater is his pleasure.”

32. “And therefore suppose that Plato dreamed of somewhat like it when he called the madness of lovers the most happy condition of all others. For he that’s violently in love lives not in his own body but in the thing he loves; and by how much the farther he runs from himself into another, by so much the greater is his pleasure.”

Erasmus Quote: “For these kind of men that are so given up to the study of wisdom are generally most unfortunate, but chiefly in their children; Nature, it seems, so providently ordering it, lest this mischief of wisdom should spread further among mankind.”

33. “For these kind of men that are so given up to the study of wisdom are generally most unfortunate, but chiefly in their children; Nature, it seems, so providently ordering it, lest this mischief of wisdom should spread further among mankind.”

Erasmus Quote: “The tyrannical scheme of Dionysius of Syracuse has been justly censured; he passed a great many laws, piling one on top of another, but he is said to have allowed his people to ignore them and in this way to have made everyone beholden to him. That was not making laws, but setting traps.”

34. “The tyrannical scheme of Dionysius of Syracuse has been justly censured; he passed a great many laws, piling one on top of another, but he is said to have allowed his people to ignore them and in this way to have made everyone beholden to him. That was not making laws, but setting traps.”

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