Erasmus Of Rotterdam Quotes

If a rock falls on your head it does positive harm, but shame, disgrace, reproaches and insults are damaging only in so far as you're conscious of them.

I do not say, however, that every delusion or wandering of the mind should be called madness. Erasmus of Rotterdam, The Praise of Folly There

The happiness which Christians seek with so many labours is nothing other than a certain kind of madness and folly

Erasmus of Rotterdam, a sixteenth-century priest who was committed to reforming the church from within, said, “When faith came to be in writings rather than in hearts, contention grew hot and love grew cold. That which is forced cannot be sincere, and that which is not voluntary cannot please Christ.

But this equality applied to such a diversity of persons and temperaments will only result in inequality.

Europe’s leading humanist and scriptural scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam

In fact 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 evil of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind

Ciertamente no hay nada tan fatuo como la ignorancia combinada con la convicción de que uno sabe mucho.

Der Kern des Glücks: Der sein zu wollen, der du bist.

Een leven zonder boeken is onleefbaar.

El placer no está nunca en la claridad y en la prudencia, siempre en la embriagadez, en la superabundancia, en la ilusión; un brote de locura corresponde siempre a toda vida verdadera.

Nicht diejenigen haben die Bücher recht lieb, welche sie unberührt in ihren Schränken aufheben, sondern sie Tag und Nacht in den Händen haben, und daher beschmutzet sind, welche Eselsohren darein machen, sie abnutzen und mit Anmerkungen bedecken.

Der Weise nimmt seine Zuflucht zu den Schriften der Alten und lernt daraus nichts als Wortklauberei. Der Tor hingegen rückt den Problemen zu Leibe und geht das Wagnis, sich mit ihnen auseinanderzusetzen, ein und gewinnt dadurch – wenn ich mich nicht täusche – die wahre Klugheit.

Je unwissender, dreister und leichtfertiger ein Arzt ist, umso höheres Ansehen genießt er; nicht zuletzt bei den betuchten Fürsten. Aber die Medizin, zumal wie sie heute von ziemlich vielen betrieben wird, ist nichts weiter als ein Zweig der Schmeichelkunst, genauso wie die Rhetorik.

Wenn Klugheit vor allem auf praktischer Erfahrung beruht, wem wird dann die Ehre dieser Bezeichnung mehr zustehen? Dem Weisen, der teils aus Scham, teils aus Ängstlichkeit, sich an nichts wagt? Oder dem Toren, dem weder Scham, die ihm abgeht, noch Gefahr, die er nicht in Betracht zieht, von irgendeiner Herausforderung abschreckt?

It is easy to say that Baldwin’s main message was racial equality. Surely the topic flows through his work more than it ebbs. Yet one makes a grave mistake in pigeonholing James Baldwin’s worldview so narrowly, for throughout this miscellany, though racial topics and racial politics are often the touchstone, his true themes are more in line with the early church fathers, with Erasmus of Rotterdam, with the great Western philosophers, with theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and James Cone. And though it is too broad—if not useless—to say his true topic is humanity, it is useful to see how, no matter his topic, how often his writing finds some ur-morality upon which to rest, how he always sees matters through a lens of decency, how he writes with his heart as well as with his head. Baldwin left the pulpit at sixteen, but he never stopped preaching.

Zu dieser Gilde der Narren gehören auch die Leute, die schon zu Lebzeiten so minutiös festlegen, mit welchem Begräbnisprunk sie beigesetzt werden wollen, dass sie sogar ausdrücklich verfügen, wie viele Fackeln, wie viele Schwarzröcke, wie viele Sänger, wie viele Trauermimen sie dabei haben wollen, gerade, als ob einer dieses Schauspiel noch mit eigenem Sinne erleben könnte oder sich die Hingegangenen schämen müssten, wenn ihr Leichnam nicht glanzvoll in die Grube fährt.

I myself once heard a great fool (a great scholar I would have said) undertaking in a laborious discourse to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity; in the unfolding whereof, that he might shew his wit and reading, and together satisfy itching ears, he proceeded in a new method, as by insisting on the letters, syllables, and proposition, on the concord of noun and verb, and that of noun substantive, and noun adjective; the auditors all wondered, and some mumbled to themselves that hemistich of Horace, Why all this needless trash?

Ochsen und Hammel darf das niedrige Volk ausweiden, aber Wild zerlegen ist ein heiliges Vorrecht der Hochgeborenen. Dieser entblößt sein Haupt, beugt sein Knie und schneidet mit dem eigens dafür bestimmten Weidemesser – irgendein beliebiges dafür zu verwenden, wäre eine Todsünde – mit bestimmten Handbewegungen bestimmte Stücke in bestimmter Reihenfolge andächtig heraus. Als handle es sich dabei um einen unerhörten und heiligen Vorgang, umringt ihn das Jagdgefolge, in Schweigen versunken und voller Bewunderung, obgleich es dieses Schauspiel mehr als Tausend Mal erlebt hat.

Was aber ist gleich töricht wie sich selbst zu gefallen und sich selbst zu bewundern? Aber andererseits, wie kannst Du etwas Anmutiges, Gefälliges und Schickliches zustande bringen, wenn Du Dir selbst missfällst? Nimm dem menschlichen Leben diese seine Würze, und sogleich schlägt dem Vortrag des Redners frostige Ablehnung entgegen, stößt der Musiker mit seinen Melodien bei allen auf taube Ohren, wird der Mime trotz seines ausdrucksvollen Gebärdenspiels ausgepfiffen, der Dichter samt seinen Musenkünsten ausgelacht, der Maler mit seiner Kunst in den Schmutz gezogen, und der Arzt nagt inmitten seiner Pillen und Pülverchen am Hungertuch.

Hábeis e frios calculadores podem vir demonstrar, ainda e sempre, que o sonho do erasmismo é impossível, e os factos poderão parecer dar-lhes razão; isso nao impede que sejam sempre necessários os seres que indicam aos povos aquilo que os aproxima e aquilo que os divide, e que renovam no coração dod homens a crença em mais alta humanidade. Há no legado de Erasmo uma promessa criadora. Aquele que mostra o espírito fora do seu quadro, nas dimensões da Humanidade, dá ao indivíduo uma forma sobre-humana; só as reivindicações ultrapessoais e que parecerem quase irrealizáveis, dão aos homens e aos povos a consciência da sua verdadeira medida.

antibarbarus,” as the fighter against all forms of backwardness and traditionalism, as harbinger of a higher, freer, more humane community of mankind, as the guide into the coming citizenship of the world, he took his place at the head of the marching column.

The only man then living who might have brought this miracle to pass was Erasmus, and Emperor Charles V, the ruler of two worlds, had sent him a special invitation to be present at the diet, conjuring him to give advice and to act as mediator. But Erasmus’s tragic destiny recapitulated itself. Again, as so often before, he missed a magnificent and unique opportunity because of overcautiousness, because of his innate weakness and his incapacity for coming to a definite conclusion.

It should be replaced by the European, the supranational ideal. “The entire world is one common fatherland,” declared Erasmus in his Querela pacis (Complaint of Peace), and from this commanding position he looked down upon the senseless quarrels between the nations, the hatred between English, Germans, and French, to exclaim: “Why do such foolish names still exist to keep us sundered, since we are united in the name of Christ?

When animals fall upon one another,” he writes, “I can understand and forgive, for they act in ignorance. But men should not need to be told that war is of necessity unjustifiable since, as a rule, it harms not so much those who prepare for it and who carry it on; for usually the full burden of it falls upon innocent parties, upon the unhappy masses, who gain nothing either from victory or from defeat.

Courage, as I have said before, was not one of Erasmus’s virtues; he chose, therefore, to flee the city rather than to fight the issue.

But there was one man alive who refused to wait, an ardent and impatient warrior in the spirit’s cause, resolute in his determination to cut this Gordian knot. This doughty knight was named Ulrich von Hutten,

There are epochs wherein neutrality is stigmatized as a crime; during times of extreme political excitement the world insists upon a clear Yes or No, an affirmation of support or of disapproval, a distinct declaration of “I am for Luther or I am for the pope.

If Erasmus may be likened to the Girondists, then Luther may be compared with the Jacobins, and Thomas Münzer and his followers with the ultra-Jacobins such as Marat.

Power and expansion of power were for Machiavelli the supremest duty, and success the decisive justification of both prince and people.

As far as the case of Luther is concerned, by far the greatest part of this trouble should be blamed on those who, both in sermons and pamphlets, made claims about the nature of indulgences and the power of the pope which no educated and religious audience could tolerate.

Phase 3: Forgiveness As I shared in Chapter 7, forgiveness is critical to Blissipline and the peak states needed for extraordinary living. Here you’ll incorporate the forgiveness exercise from that chapter into your daily practice. Science is now showing that forgiveness can lead to profound health benefits, including reduced back pain, higher athletic performance, better heart health, and greater feelings of happiness. One study of a small group of people with chronic back pain showed that those who meditated with a focus on moving from anger to compassion reported less pain and anxiety compared to those who got regular care. Another study found that forgiving someone improved blood pressure and reduced the workload on the heart. Interesting that lightening the heart of negativity should literally help it. Research on the impact of forgiveness by Xue Zheng of Erasmus University’s Rotterdam School of Management showed that forgiveness makes the body seemingly stronger. “Our research shows that forgivers perceive a less daunting world and perform better on challenging physical tasks,” said Zheng. In one study, participants could actually jump higher after writing an account of forgiving someone who had harmed them. In another study by Zheng, participants who were asked to guess at the steepness of a hill described the hill as less steep after they had written down an account of an incident where they had forgiven someone. In a previous chapter, I described my own powerful experiences with forgiveness during meditation. That’s why forgiveness is one of the components of the Six-Phase—it strengthens not only your body, but also your soul.

He recognized but two strata of society, an upper, consisting of the aristocracy of the mind, and a lower, plebeian, barbaric stratum which comprehended the remainder of mankind.

His only master had always been fair-mindedness,

History, however, is invariably unjust to the vanquished; she does not appreciate men of moderation, men who play the role of mediators, men who act as reconcilers, in a word, humane men. She loves men of passion, the immoderate, the adventurers in the realms of deed and of thought.

He knew practically nothing save book-lore, possessing neither an eye for paintings nor an ear for music.

Of all the men of genius who have lived upon this earth, Luther was, perhaps, the most fanatical, the most unteachable, the most intractable, and the most quarrelsome. He could only tolerate those who were completely acquiescent with his views, so that he could make what use he would of them; those who said him nay served him as targets for his wrath, and provided him with material to grind to powder with his scorn.

Erasmus and Basle, have become inseparable: one cannot nowadays think of Erasmus without calling up the vision of Basle, or of Basle without picturing Erasmus.

In practice, the wet nurses did not have to be free women or of Christian upbringing; it was enough if they were fair-skinned, like the slaves from the east. 15 The idea that it could be otherwise, that breastfeeding was close to a mother’s heart and important for the child’s development, was professed by Renaissance philosophers such as Leon Battista Alberti, and later Erasmus of Rotterdam and Michel de Montaigne, who were looking back to Plutarch and other writers from classical antiquity.

Yet they also could not forget the devastating critique of the papacy and the church hierarchy unleashed in the previous century. That critique would surface in the works of the devotio moderna’s most sophisticated offspring, Erasmus of Rotterdam.2 It would reach critical mass in 1517, when the storm over papal indulgences forced these devoted and sober citizens to realize that the Church was either too timid or too arrogant to change, or both. The resulting explosion would be the Reformation. It would knock the schoolmen’s Aristotle off his throne and open a new era for the European mind.

The man who discovered the power behind that authority was not Gutenberg or Caxton or even Luther. It was Erasmus of Rotterdam.

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