Inspirational Quotes by Desiderius Erasmus
“Indeed, I disagree very much with those who are unwilling that Holy Scripture, translated into the vulgar tongue, be read by the uneducated, as if Christ taught such intricate doctrines that they could scarcely be understood by very few theologians, or as if the strength of the Christian religion consisted in men's ignorance of it.”
“By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him.”
“When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”
“Everyone knows that by far the happiest and universally enjoyable age of man is the first. What is there about babies which makes us hug and kiss and fondle them, so that even an enemy would give them help at that age?”
“Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin. Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.”
“Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another's.”
“A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.”
“Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.”
“By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.”
“Length of life should be measured not by the number of years but by the number of right actions.”
“If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.”
topics: Laziness
“Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known.”
topics: Life
“No one is to be despaired of as long as he breathes. (While there is life there is hope.)”
topics: Life
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Desiderius Erasmus, was born at Rotterdam, apparently on October 28, 1466, the illegitimate son of a physician's daughter by a man who afterwards turned monk. On his parents' death his guardians insisted on his entering a monastery and in the Augustinian college of Stein near Gouda he spent six years -- it was certainly this personal experience of the ways of the monks that made Erasmus their relentless enemy.
In 1519 appeared the first edition of his Colloquia, usually regarded as his masterpiece. The audacity and incisiveness with which it handles the abuses of the Church prepared men's minds for the subsequent work of Martin Luther.
Erasmus stands as the supreme type of cultivated common sense applied to human affairs. He rescued theology from the pedantries of the Schoolmen, exposed the abuses of the Church, and did more than any other single person to advance the Revival of Learning.