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Out of all those centuries the Greeks can count seven sages at the most, and if anyone looks at them more closely I swear he'll not find so much as a half-wise man or even a third of a wise man among them.

Desiderius Erasmus

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Desiderius Erasmus
Age: 69 †
Born: 1466
Born: November 6
Died: 1536
Died: July 12
Bible Translator
Essayist
Latinist
Philosopher
Priest
Teacher
Theologian
Translator
University Teacher
R'dam
Erasmus of Rotterdam
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
Erasmus Von Rotterdam Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
Erasmus von Rotterdam
Erasmus Rotterdam
Much
Among
Closely
Men
Century
Swear
Wise
Centuries
Anyone
Greek
Half
Count
Find
Third
Sages
Looks
Thirds
Greeks
Even
Seven
Sage

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He who allows oppression shares the crime.
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Man is to man either a god or a wolf.
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It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.
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Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.
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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.
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He who shuns the millstone, shuns the meal.
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From hence, no question, has sprung an observation ... confirmed now into a settled opinion, that some long experienced souls in the world, before their dislodging, arrive to the height of prophetic spirits.
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So our student will flit like a busy bee through the entire garden of literature, light on every blossom, collect a little nectar from each, and carry it to his hive.
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A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.
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...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.
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Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin.
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You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.
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There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.
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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.
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By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him.
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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.
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Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.
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By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.
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The wedlocks of minds will be greater than that of bodies.
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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?
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