Desiderius Erasmus

"If you wish to be loved, show yourself lovely."

"A bitter thing it is to look at happiness through another man's eyes."

"Patience is a virtue that can benefit a man greatly."

"The sun, the moon, and the stars would have disappeared long ago had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands."

"War comes easy when soldiers are hungry."

"It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear."

"The investigator should have a robust faith and yet not believe."

"To delight in the writing of an author is the best reason for reading him."

"I am naturally a man of peace."

"Call him wise whose actions, words, and steps are all a preparation for death."

"Advice is judged by results, not by intentions."

"Whoever is happy will make others happy too."

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time."

"He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself."

"There is nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequal people."

"A man's gait is an index of his nature."

"The chief part of friendship is in knowing when to relax and when to be intense."

"Courtesy is not dead - it has merely gone to bed with economics."

"Time sees all things done, and beauty fades before the ravages of years."

"Better to lose an eye than to lose the truth."

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

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to preserve oneself."

"He who desires nothing beyond what he has acquired, possesses all riches."

"Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life."

"When I appear before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.'"

"The greatest strength is in gentleness."

"Humility is unfeigned lowliness of mind arising from true knowledge of ourselves and God."

"In the midst of winter, I found there was an invincible summer within me."

"The errors of the learned are more dangerous than the ignorance of the simple."

"A man's own manner and character is what most becomes him."