Erasmus on Greek

“It is a fairly troublesome business to learn to recognize the shapes of letters at sight, to pronounce readily, to decline and conjugate. Do you think a man has achieved nothing who has digested all this tedious stuff?… And maybe he is content with that, for the only reason he wishes to learn Greek is to be able to spend his time with more profit and more sure judgment on the Scriptures.”

-Erasmus, Letter to William Latimer, February 1517

The picture: Erasmus, by Hendrik Bary, 1671.