Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
Erasmus
Profession: Philosopher Nationality: Dutch
He who allows oppression shares the crime.
A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.
It is doubly a fault, you know, when against nature one assumes the color of a virtue, warping one's character in a direction not its own.
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.
Given a choice between a folly and a sacrament, one should always choose the folly—because we know a sacrament will not bring us closer to god and there's always the chance that a folly will.
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.
Just as, according to the proverb of the Greeks, "an ape is always an ape, though dressed in scarlet," so a woman is always a woman -- that is, a fool -- whatever part she may have chosen to play.
The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
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.
To know nothing is the happiest life.
What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.
Bidden or unbidden, God is present.
Prevention is better than cure.
Everyone knows that by far the happiest and universally enjoyable age of man is the first. What is there about babies which makes us hug and kiss and fondle them, so that even an enemy would give them help at that age?
