On the Internet you can often find an aphorism authored by a famous Brazilian writer. We checked to see if he wrote anything similar.
The full statement goes like this: “Money doesn’t bring happiness, but it can buy a yacht with whores. And I've never seen anyone sad on a yacht with whores."
Phrase active spreads in the form of popular demotivators on social networks and is mentioned in certain publications (for example, on “Peekaboo"). The famous blogger Ilya Varlamov quoted her in X and on Facebook, in both cases causing a large number of reposts.
Paulo Coelho is a world-famous Brazilian writer whose books have sold a total of circulation more than 300 million copies, 150 million of which are from his most famous novel, The Alchemist. For decades, many life-affirming quotes from Coelho have been circulating on the Internet.
“Verified” did not find statements reminiscent of this phrase, neither in Russian translations of the works of Paulo Coelho, nor in his accounts on social networks (Instagram, X, Facebook), nor on the official website, neither in blog writer. Also, the quote is absent in publications of reputable media, both in Russian, Portuguese or English.
If you trace the history of the dissemination of this quote in Russian, you can see that in the earliest examples (spring 2014) no name Coelho. This is a translation of a Spanish-language statement, a screenshot of which is given in one of the publications.
Indeed, in the Spanish-language segment of the Internet there is an aphorism (at that time without mentioning the name of the Brazilian writer) started spread in the winter of 2014. Oldest publication, found by "Verified", is dated January 6th and belongs to user X @SrEfectoDoppler. This tweet went viral (543 retweets).
However, Coelho's native language is Portuguese, and the quote is in that language started separated only two years later. However, in Brazil this statement was not later attributed to the local writer - its author, among others called even Charlie Chaplin (although there is nothing like that in authoritative sources about his life either). It is not known for certain why the phrase was attributed to Coelho outside Brazil. Perhaps the quote echoed the words “He who has money is never truly alone” from Coelho’s novel “Alchemist"or with the widely cited replica the writer himself from a 2005 interview: “Of course, having money is just great, because you can do what you consider important to yourself. I've always been a rich person because money has nothing to do with happiness."
Thus, the quote about money and loose women has nothing to do with the life and work of Paulo Coelho. It first gained widespread popularity in the 2010s in Spanish.
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons
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