Quotation
Last reviewed:
“The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.”
Erasmus · Christian humanism · Renaissance · 1511
What does it mean?
Folly praises the wish to be what one already is as the chief element of happiness, inside a speech that also flatters delusions. The careful reading refuses to lift the sentence out as straight advice, because the speaker is personified Folly and the praise is the method of the satire. A rival reading takes the line as a sincere humanist motto, permission to stop performing, and one strand of the book can support a limited version of that permission. The gap between those readings is where Praise of Folly does its work.
Did Erasmus really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Spoken by the character Folly in Praise of Folly, a satire of 1511. It is Erasmus's text and not his advice in a straight voice. Translations vary. Treat the speaker as part of the meaning. The English is a translation of a satiric speech.
Where it comes from
Praise of Folly, Folly speaking
Approximate date: 1511.
How to use it
At a performance review in a Swansea call centre, someone is told to want to be what they already are, meaning the script and the rota. Try the sentence twice: once as permission to stop performing a false ambition, and once as a trap that blesses the role another person finds convenient. The book lives in that gap, and so does the review if anyone is listening to who is speaking.
A mindset reading
A line from a satire is evidence about a character, and quoting it as the author's motto skips the form. Folly says a great many things the author is not simply affirming, including compliments to the elites the book is skinning. Speaker and author have to stay in different hands, or the joke becomes a policy by accident.
Understand the philosophy
Praise of Folly lets personified Folly indict scholars, clergy, and princes by praising them, and the book was dedicated to Thomas More. The key term is irony, humanist praise that often means its opposite, so that no single sentence is safe as a motto. The Latin title is Moriae Encomium, from 1511. Translations vary, and a particular English cadence should be checked against a standard rendering before it is called verbatim.
- happiness
- self
FAQ
What does it mean?
Folly praises the wish to be what one already is as the chief element of happiness, inside a speech that also flatters delusions. The careful reading refuses to lift the sentence out as straight advice, because the speaker is personified Folly and the praise is the method of the satire. A rival reading takes the line as a sincere humanist motto, permission to stop performing, and one strand of the book can support a limited version of that permission. The gap between those readings is where Praise of Folly does its work.
Did Erasmus really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Spoken by the character Folly in Praise of Folly, a satire of 1511. It is Erasmus's text and not his advice in a straight voice. Translations vary. Treat the speaker as part of the meaning. The English is a translation of a satiric speech.
Which work is it in?
Praise of Folly, Folly speaking Approximate date: 1511.