Noah Sage > Noah's Quotes

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Your library is your paradise.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“The desire to write grows with writing.”
― Erasmus

“The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.”
― Erasmus, Praise of Folly

“The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“Bidden or unbidden, God is present.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly.”
― Erasmus

“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?”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“Just as nothing is more foolish than misplaced wisdom, so too, nothing is more imprudent than perverse prudence. And surely it is perverse not to adapt yourself to the prevailing circumstances, to refuse 'to do as the Romans do,' to ignore the party-goer's maxium 'take a drink or take your leave,' to insist that the play should not be a play. True prudence, on the other hand, recognizes human limitations and does not strive to leap beyond them; it is willing to run with the herd, to overlook faults tolerantly or to share them in a friendly spirit. But, they say, that is exactly what we mean by folly. (I will hardly deny it -- as long as they will reciprocate by admitting that this is exactly what is means to perform the play of life.)”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus , Praise of Folly

“A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.”
― Erasmus Roterdamus

“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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“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.”
― Erasmus

“I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“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...”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Praise of Folly

“...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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Praise of Folly

“But I am well aware of the excuse which men, ever ingenious in devising mischief to themselves as well as others, offer in extenuation of their conduct in going to war. They allege, that they are compelled to it; that they are dragged against their will to war. I answer them, deal fairly; pull off the mask; throw away all false colours; consult your own heart, and you will find that anger, ambition, and folly are the compulsory force that has dragged you to war, and not any necessity; unless indeed you call the insatiable cravings of a covetous mind, necessity" ` The Complaint of Peace”
― Desiderus Erasmus

“Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.”
― 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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“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.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“Moreover God hath ordained man in this world, as it were, the very image of himself, to the intent, that he, as it were a god on earth, should provide for the wealth of all creatures.”
― Desiderius Erasmus, Against War

“Surely there is nothing so ungracious, nor nothing so cruel, but men will hold therewith, if it be once approved by custom.”
― Desiderius Erasmus, Against War

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“I do not deny that what happened to us is a thing worth laughing at. But it is not worth telling, for not everyone is sufficiently intelligent to be able to see things from the right point of view.”
― Cervantes, Don Quixote