For myself, if it came to the point, I should do no better than Simon Peter." Moderate in all things, he would have liked, he said, to live without eating and drinking, although he never found it convenient to do so, and he rejoiced when advancing age diminished his tendency to other carnal pleasures in which he had moderately indulged.
Although awake to the abuses of the Church, he thought Luther going too fast and too far.

He began by applauding ended by censuring the monk of Wittemberg.

The Reformation might have been delayed for centuries had Erasmus and other moderate men been the only reformers.

He will long be honored for his elegant, Latinity.

In the republic of letters, his efforts to infuse a pure taste, a sound criticism, a love for the beautiful and the classic, in place of the owlish pedantry which had so long flapped and hooted through mediaeval cloisters, will always be held in grateful reverence.