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.
There are infinite of these subtle trifles, and others more subtle than these, of notions, relations, instants, formalities, quiddities, haecceities, which no one can perceive without a Lynceus whose eyes could look through a stone wall and discover those things through the thickest darkness that never were.
The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.
We are aliens in this visible world.
It becomes a matter to be put to the test of battle, when someone makes a conjunction of a word which belongs in the bailiwick of the adverbs.
The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly.
It is wiser to treat men and things as though we held this world the common fatherland of all.
The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.
Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly.
There are others who are rich only in wishes; they build beautiful air-castles and conceive that doing so is enough for happiness.
By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him.
Love that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health is short lived, and apt to have ague fits.
For what is there at all done among men that is not full of folly, and that too from fools and to fools? Against.
In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king.
At last concluded that no creature was more miserable than man, for that all other creatures are content with those bounds that nature set them, only man endeavors to exceed them.
The desire to write grows with writing.
And yet I do not suppose the female sex is so foolish as to become incensed at me for this, that I, a woman and Folly as well, attribute folly to women.
And of these, a great part build so much on their ceremonies and petty traditions of men that they think one heaven is too poor a reward for so great merit, little dreaming that the time will come when Christ, not regarding any of these trifles, will call them to account for His precept of charity.
The entire world is my temple, and a very fine one too, if I'm not mistaken, and I'll never lack priests to serve it as long as there are men.
Don't give your advice before you are called upon.
Concealed talent brings no reputation.
Do but observe our grim philosophers that are perpetually beating their brains on knotty subjects, and for the most part you'll find them grown old before they are scarcely young.
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.
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?
The nearer people approach old age the closer they return to a semblance of childhood, until the time comes for them to depart this life, again like children, neither tired of living nor aware of death.
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.
Invite a wise man to a feast and he'll spoil the company, either with morose silence or troublesome disputes. Take him out to dance, and you'll swear "a cow would have done it better."
It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst.
Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.
Reflection is a flower of the mind, giving out wholesome fragrance; but revelry is the same flower, when rank and running to seed.
The pleasures which we most rarely experience give us the greatest delight.
Humility is truth.
This is a new one of my own making: I hate a man that remembers what he hears. Wherefore farewell, clap your hands, live and drink lustily, my most excellent disciples of Folly.
The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
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.
Yet in the midst of all their prosperity, princes in this respect seem to me most unfortunate, because, having no one to tell them truth, they are forced to receive flatterers for friends.
And therefore suppose that Plato dreamed of somewhat like it when he called the madness of lovers the most happy condition of all others. For he that's violently in love lives not in his own body but in the thing he loves; and by how much the farther he runs from himself into another, by so much the greater is his pleasure.
Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.
By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.
Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.
Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.
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.
What is more fawning than a dog? And yet what is more faithful? What is more fond and caressing than a squirrel? But where will you find a better friend to man?
Folly is the only thing that keeps youth at a stay and old age afar off;" as it is verified in the Brabanders, of whom there goes this common saying, "That age, which is wont to render other men wiser, makes them the greater fools.
In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
For anyone who loves intensely lives not in himself but in the object of his love, and the further he can move out of himself into his love, the happier he is.
Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known.
