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For contemporary readers the importance of the Laus Stultitiae was, to a great extent, in the direct satire. Its lasting value is in those passages where we truly grant that folly is wisdom and the reverse. Erasmus knows the aloofness of the ground of all things: all consistent thinking out of the dogmas of faith leads to absurdity. Only look at the theological quiddities of effete scholasticism.
The gentleman who was in the act of pleading had a huge open paper in his hand, from which he droned forth certain legal quiddities of the dullest and most uninteresting nature. He was in earnest, for there was a perpetual energy in his drone, as a droning bee might drone who was known to drone louder than other drones.
The article stipulating the maintenance of the Ghent treaty he regarded as idle wind; the solemn saws of the State Council and the quiddities from Louvain being likely to prove but slender bulwarks against the returning tide of tyranny. Either it was tacitly intended to tolerate the Reformed religion, or to hunt it down.
"Oh Myles, I meant not to chafe thy temper so sorely, and I pray thee hold me excused for untimely laughter; but in good sooth it so tickled my fancy to hear thee airing thine old world quips and quiddities about coat-armor, and one with whom a Standish might fitly wed, and yeomen snatched from oblivion by the saving grace of a governor's title!
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