(67 quotes found)
“People who use their erudition to write for a learned minority... don't seem to me favored by fortune but rather to be pitied for their continuous self-torture. They add, change, remove, lay aside, take up, rephrase, show to their friends, keep for nine years and are never satisfied. And their futile reward, a word of praise from a handful of people, they win at such a cost -- so many late nights, such loss of sleep, sweetest of all things, and so much sweat and anguish... their health deteriorates, their looks are destroyed, they suffer partial or total blindness, poverty, ill-will, denial of pleasure, premature old age and early death.”
Desiderius Erasmus
“Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.”
“The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.”
Desiderius
“The desire to write grows with writing.”
“In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king”
“By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him”
“A good prince will tax as lightly as possible those commodities which are used by the poorest members of society: grain, bread, beer, wine, clothing, and all other staples without which human life could not exist”
“A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.”
“It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence.”
“Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't --it's human.”
