Desiderius Erasmus

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.

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

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.

Nowadays the rage for possession has got to such a pitch that there is nothing in the realm of nature, whether sacred or profane, out of which profit cannot be squeezed.

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.

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.

Concealed talent brings no reputation.

Don't give your advice before you are called upon.

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

The desire to write grows with writing.

Prevention is better than cure.

Time takes away the grief of men.

Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
- All from Desiderius Erasmus, 1466 - 1536

About:
Desiderius Erasmus was born Gerrit Gerritszoon at Rotterdam, Holland on 26 Oct in 1466 (1469?), probably. (There is no dispute over the date, the year is uncertain.) His parents weren't married, and he was orphaned by the plague at age thirteen, but managed to acquire a broad education and had made a reputation for himself throughout Renaissance Europe by age 30. He was the frequent guest and correspondent of kings, princes, the notable philosophers and theologians of his day, as well as being well connected with the Roman Catholic hierarchy which he later attacked. He went from humble, in fact disgraced, beginnings to fame and fortune entirely on the basis of his intellect and wit.