Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth26 October 1466
education children learning
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.
income handsome frugality
Frugality is a handsome income.
love good-health short-lived
Love that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health is short-lived.
lying knowing talking
A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.
prayer heaven may
Heaven grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance. Prayer To A Pregnant Woman
running believe writing
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.
work meals
He who shuns the millstone, shuns the meal.
age youth beats
It is folly alone that stays the fugue of Youth and beats off touring Old Age.
war military knows
War is delightful for those who don't know it
art thinking jewels
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.
ideas meditation mind
Besides, it happens (how, I cannot tell) that an idea launched like a javelin in proverbial form strikes with sharper point on the hearer’s mind and leaves implanted barbs for meditation...
strength eagles
Eagles don't catch flies.
darkness atheism existence
They are looking in utter darkness for that which has no existence whatsoever.
sound philosopher affair
Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. This was the sound conclusion of the Academic sceptics, who were the least surly of philosophers.