Quotes and Sayings about Folly
"It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution."
- Joseph Addison
(Related: Age, Censure, Folly, Man, Persecution, Weakness, World)
"A good folly is worth what you pay for it."
- George Ade
(Related: Folly, Worth)
"True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance."
- Akhenaton
(Related: Wisdom, Folly, Fool, Ignorance, Man, Mind)
"To be bowed by grief is folly; Naught is gained by melancholy; Better than the pain of thinking, Is to steep the sense in drinking."
- Alcaeus
(Related: Drinking, Folly, Grief, Melancholy, Pain, Sense, Thinking)
"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition."
- Isaac Asimov
(Related: Burden, Folly, Future, Humanity, Stars, Superstition)
"The Steps to Folly as well as Sin are gradual, and almost imperceptible, and when we are once on the Decline, we go down without taking notice on't."
- Mary Astell
(Related: Folly, Sin)
"Although it has been said by men of more wit than wisdom, and perhaps more malice than either, that women are naturally incapable of acting prudently, or that they are necessarily determined to folly, I must by no means grant it."
- Mary Astell
(Related: Men, Women, Wisdom, Acting, Folly, Malice, Wit)
"When knowledge is limited - it leads to folly... When knowledge exceeds a certain limit, it leads to exploitation."
- Abu Bakr
(Related: Knowledge, Exploitation, Folly)
"Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Experience, Wisdom, Acquaintance, Folly, Old)
"Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Age, Life, Folly, Remorse, Sin, Youth)
"The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure."
- William Blake
(Related: Wisdom, Folly, Measure)
"The fool who persists in his folly will become wise."
- William Blake
(Related: Folly, Fool, Will)
"If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise."
- William Blake
(Related: Folly, Fool)
"We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense."
- Andrew Coyle Bradley
(Related: Folly, Language, Selfishness, Sense, Tyranny, Violence)
"I. cannot stoop to reply to the folly and the slander of every poor Tory partisan who assails me, and I should not have noticed you but for the fact that you are a member of the House of Commons."
- John Bright
(Related: Fact, Folly, Poor, Slander)
"You can do but one of these things; it is folly to attempt anything else, for there cannot exist a slave confederacy and a free confederacy side by side upon this continent."
- John Brough
(Related: Folly)
"Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it."
- Warren Buffett
(Related: Friend, Enemy, Folly, Profit)
"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."
- Edmund Burke
(Related: Wisdom, Virtue, Folly, Liberty, Madness, Restraint, Vice)
"Folly loves the martyrdom of fame."
- Lord Byron
(Related: Fame, Folly)
"I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler."
- Wilhelm Canaris
(Related: Country, Duty, Folly)
"Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes."
- Richard Cecil
(Related: Wisdom, Day, Folly)
"There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair."
- Miguel de Cervantes
(Related: Despair, Folly, Man, World)
"Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners."
- Lord Chesterfield
(Related: Folly, Laughter, Manners)
"In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: War, Work, Life, Folly, Open)
"The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Related: Enemy, Folly, Luxury)
"Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness."
- Cyril Connolly
(Related: Wisdom, Darkness, Folly, Ignorance, Infatuation, Passion, Purity)
"Folly always knows the answer."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Folly)
"At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Wisdom, Folly)
"Each is under the most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap his strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him."
- Anna Julia Cooper
(Related: Strength, Folly, Labor, Obligation, Vice)
"Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly."
- Democritus
(Related: Men, Gods, Blindness, Folly, Gifts, Now, Old)
"To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!"
- Denis Diderot
(Related: Love, Desire, Destruction, End, Folly, Nothing, Order)
"To become Christ-like is the only thing in the whole world worth caring for, the thing before which every ambition of man is folly and all lower achievement vain."
- Henry Drummond
(Related: Achievement, Ambition, Caring, Christ, Folly, Man, World, Worth)
"Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny."
- Marguerite Duras
(Related: God, Alcohol, Comfort, Destiny, Folly, Man)
"The father's greatest folly is that he believes he can be a much more simple person than he is; he is not really able to deal with his own complexity as a human being."
- Atom Egoyan
(Related: Father, Being, Complexity, Folly)
"The best plan is to profit by the folly of others."
- Pliny the Elder
(Related: Folly, Profit)
"In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause."
- George Eliot
(Related: Wisdom, Applause, Folly, Laughter)
"It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself."
- Epicurus
(Related: Power, Gods, Folly, Man)
"Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly."
- Desiderius Erasmus
(Related: Success, Folly, Fun, Party, Present, Woman)
"Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human."
- Desiderius Erasmus
(Related: Deception, Folly, Ignorance, Illusion, Misery, Now)
"I think it's a lovely idea, but it will not pass the Congress. I live in a world of realities. The policy of our country is that we can drill our way to independence. I think that's a march to folly."
- Anna Eshoo
(Related: Policy, Idea, Congress, Country, Folly, Independence, March, Will, World)
"There is perhaps no surer mark of folly, than to attempt to correct natural infirmities of those we love."
- Henry Fielding
(Related: Love, Folly)
"The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture."
- Ian Hamilton Finlay
(Related: Architecture, Trust, Folly, Pleasure)
"Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home."
- Shelby Foote
(Related: Home, Love, Folly, Mankind, Mind, Novelty, Rules)
"I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom."
- Anatole France
(Related: Wisdom, Enthusiasm, Folly, Indifference)
"Beauty and folly are old companions."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Beauty, Folly, Old)
"All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people."
- James A. Garfield
(Related: Wisdom, People, Folly)
"Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom."
- Elizabeth Gaskell
(Related: Wisdom, People, Folly)
"When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?"
- Oliver Goldsmith
(Related: Art, Men, Charm, Folly, Guilt, Melancholy, Woman)
"To take my work seriously would be the height of folly."
- Edward Gorey
(Related: Work, Folly)
"Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise."
- Thomas Gray
(Related: Folly, Ignorance)
"'Tis folly to be wise."
- Thomas Gray
(Related: Folly)
"The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashion, and placing value on ourselves by them is one of the most childish pieces of folly."
- Matthew Hale
(Related: Clothes, Fashion, Folly, Value, Vanity)
"His foe was folly and his weapon wit."
- Anthony Hope
(Related: Folly, Wit)
"If it be not a sin, an open, flagrant violation of all the rules of justice and humanity, to hold these slaves in bondage, it is indeed folly to put ourselves to any trouble and expense in order to free them."
- Samuel Hopkins
(Related: Folly, Humanity, Justice, Open, Order, Rules, Sin, Trouble)
"What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal."
- John Howe
(Related: Life, Thought, Folly)
"The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: Being, Folly, Injustice, World)
"The preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or delusion."
- Derek Jarman
(Related: Ambition, Delusion, Folly, Illusion, Pursuit)
"To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly."
- Samuel Johnson
(Related: Wisdom, Folly)
"Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise."
- Samuel Johnson
(Related: Love, Wisdom, Folly, Fool)
"To keep your secret is wisdom; to expect others to keep it is folly."
- William Samuel Johnson
(Related: Wisdom, Folly)
"We should never rush into folly just because other nations are practicing it."
- Leon Kass
(Related: Folly, Nations)
"And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Folly, Mind)
"War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason."
- James Madison
(Related: War, Progress, Folly, Reason, Wickedness)
"It would be stupid tameness, and unaccountable folly, for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious and cruel man, to wanton and riot in their misery."
- Jonathan Mayhew
(Related: Folly, Man, Misery, Nations, Riot)
"The principal axiom in their theory was: Everything can be proved, and everything can be disproved; and in the process, one must profit as much from the folly of others, and from his own superiority, as he can."
- Moses Mendelssohn
(Related: Superiority, Folly, Profit, Theory)
"For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people."
- Thomas More
(Related: People, Folly, Houses, Rain, Skin)
"My only books were woman's looks, and folly's all they've taught me."
- Thomas More
(Related: Books, Folly, Woman)
"It may be assumed as an axiom that Providence has never gifted any political party with all of political wisdom or blinded it with all of political folly."
- John George Nicolay
(Related: Wisdom, Folly, May, Party, Providence)
"Always the cat remains a little beyond the limits we try to set for him in our blind folly."
- Andre Norton
(Related: Blind, Folly, Limits)
"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia."
- George Orwell
(Related: Age, Politics, Folly, Hatred, Lies)
"But I think I can sincerely declare that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience' sake; and from my soul I despise all those whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes."
- James Otis
(Related: Soul, Conscience, Folly, Guilt, Malice, Name)
"At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time."
- Ovid
(Related: Time, Delay, Folly)
"Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society."
- Robert Owen
(Related: Society, Folly, Law, State)
"Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs."
- Robert Peel
(Related: Feeling, Folly, Obstinacy, Opinion, Prejudice, Public, Public opinion, Right, Weakness, Wrong)
"Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Genius, Folly, Sense, Taste)
"Fear nothing but what thy industry may prevent; be confident of nothing but what fortune cannot defeat; it is no less folly to fear what is impossible to be avoided than to be secure when there is a possibility to be deprived."
- Francis Quarles
(Related: Fear, Possibility, Defeat, Folly, Fortune, May, Nothing)
"But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been."
- John H. Reagan
(Related: Folly, Injustice, Self, Will)
"Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars."
- Tom Robbins
(Related: Folly, Stars)
"Is there in all the history of human folly a greater fool than a clergymen in politics?"
- Pat Robertson
(Related: History, Politics, Folly, Fool)
"It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Folly)
"It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Folly, Want)
"Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Life, Accidents, Folly, Help)
"He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Folly)
"Away with that folly that her rights would be detrimental to her character - that if she were recognized as the equal to a man she would cease to be a woman!"
- Ernestine Rose
(Related: Character, Folly, Rights, Man)
"Early in my business career I learned the folly of worrying about anything. I have always worked as hard as I could, but when a thing went wrong and could not be righted, I dismissed it from my mind."
- Julius Rosenwald
(Related: Business, Career, Folly, Mind, Wrong)
"The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another."
- Joseph Roux
(Related: Folly)
"One man's folly is another man's wife."
- Helen Rowland
(Related: Wife, Folly, Man)
"A law can be both economic folly and constitutional."
- Antonin Scalia
(Related: Folly, Law)
"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Art, Education, Science, Folly, Fool, Philosophy, Superstition, University)
"Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance."
- Beverly Sills
(Related: Anger, Folly, Repentance)
"Much of the wisdom of one age, is the folly of the next."
- Charles Simmons
(Related: Wisdom, Age, Folly)
"Folly enlarges men's desires while it lessens their capacities."
- Robert South
(Related: Men, Folly)
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."
- Herbert Spencer
(Related: Men, Folly, Fools, Result, World)
"It is always right to detect a fraud, and to perceive a folly; but it is very often wrong to expose either. A man of business should always have his eyes open, but must often seem to have them shut."
- Philip Stanhope
(Related: Business, Eyes, Folly, Fraud, Man, Open, Right, Wrong)
"The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity."
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
(Related: Cleverness, Folly, Nothing, Obstinacy, Reason)
"There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors."
- William Graham Sumner
(Related: Folly, Laws, Property)
"It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom."
- Jonathan Swift
(Related: Mistake, Coffee, Echo, Folly, London, Voice)
"Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly."
- Jonathan Swift
(Related: Men, Humor, Folly)
"It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door."
- Publilius Syrus
(Related: Fire, Folly)
"Man's wisdom is his best friend; folly his worst enemy."
- William Temple
(Related: Wisdom, Friend, Enemy, Folly, Man)
"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."
- Paul Valery
(Related: Discovery, Folly, Metaphor, Oracle, Paradox, Proof, Spring)
"The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights'. It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself."
- Queen Victoria
(Related: Folly, Rights, Queen)
"What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature."
- Voltaire
(Related: Nature, Error, First, Folly, Humanity, Law, Tolerance)
"For the subtlest folly proceeds from the subtlest wisdom."
- John Webster
(Related: Wisdom, Folly)
"It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do."
- Richard Whately
(Related: Men, Folly, May)
"The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us."
- E. O. Wilson
(Related: Destruction, Diversity, Folly, Loss, Now, Will, Years)
"The Lord had been very gracious, and spoke peace to me in the time of my distress, and I now most ungratefully turned again to folly; at times I felt sharp reproof, but I did not get low enough to cry for help."
- John Woolman
(Related: Peace, Time, Folly, Help, Now)
"Those who realize their folly are not true fools."
- Zhuangzi
(Related: Folly, Fools)