Sunday, February 15, 2009

Erasmus quoted

This is funny: this page has many good quotes about nudity and such. One of them:

"Only busy saints and true villains forsake activities which give them pleasure. If you regard yourself as neither, enjoy the world as your own."
- Erasmus

... is from my novel Sugar Domino. I made it up, there is no Erasmus. I attributed it to "From "World of Erasmus" 1794"

... I see it is quoted various places on the web. One of them attributes it to Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.

I always wanted to make a famous quote. Too bad it has to be from a fake author. :-)

Update: when I say there is no Erasmus, I didn't mean it's a made-up name. I am sure there have been many Erasmi.

I think the one that inspired me was Erasmus Montanus, which is a character in a humorous play by olden-times Danish playwright Ludvig Holberg. "Erasmus Montanus" is a latinification of "Rasmus Berg," the Danish name of a young man who has been to university and comes home full of high-flown ideas like the world is not flat, but round. He now uses that name instead. In the end he is soundly put in his place by the down-to-Earth villagers and family and takes his old name and renounces those ridiculous beliefs.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

... is from my novel Sugar Domino.

Hey, you have a book out. Congratulations! How come no plugging in this blog (until now)?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Beats me. I wrote it a long time ago (mid nineties). And there's been a link on Domai. (Though the Lulu/paper version is only from last year.)

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Erasmus Mulligan was a drunk but loveable ringmaster in the Lucky Luke album Western Circus. Quite funny at that. Have you ever seen a grim professional gunman miss an elephant at ten feet in a corridor? In a friggin WESTERN?
:-)

In case you want to be truthful next time:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erasmus

Still, your pastiche one was great. Haven't I seen it on Domai as well?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I don't know, but it may come there.

I was never less than truthful, since I had never heard of Desiderius Erasmus.