The Praise of Folly (Illustrated by Hans Holbein)

To an intelligent, human beings and human institutions really are intolerably stupid and there are times when their pent-up feelings of impatience and annoyance can't be contained any longer. Erasmus's Praise of Folly was a dam-burst of this kind; it washed away everything: popes, kings, monks (of course), scholars, war, theology - the whole lot.