Top 100 Quotes About Folly
#3. Opium: that terrible truth serum. Dark secrets guarded for a lifetime can be divulged with carefree folly after a sip of the black smoke.
Roman Payne
#4. The Iraqis had paid a terrible price for Saddam's folly (in the Gulf War). But looking at the devastation they left behind (in Kuwait), my sympathy was limited.
Margaret Thatcher
#5. 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
#6. Wisdom at times is found in folly.
Horace
#7. Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.
Richard Cecil
#8. Lord, enlighten thou our enemies. Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers: we are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength.
John Stuart Mill
#9. For disappointments, that come not by our own folly, they are the trials or corrections of Heaven: and it is our own fault, if they prove not our advantage.
William Penn
#10. A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism.
Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
#11. It is folly to think the Lord provides grace for every trouble but the one you are in today.
Charles Spurgeon
#12. The day will come, sooner or later, when people will wonder at the necessity of taking all this trouble to expose the folly of a system, so childish and absurd, and yet so often enforced at the point of a bayonet.
Jean-Baptiste Say
#13. 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
#14. She had not yet such a love of wisdom as to be able to bear with folly. The foolish and weak are the most easily disgusted with folly and weakness which is not of their own sort, and are the last to make allowances for them.
George MacDonald
#15. A man carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.
George Eliot
#16. I respect the right of Israel to defend itself, and - and we stand with - with Israel. We're a - a nation - two nations that come together in - in peace and that want to see Iran being dissuaded from its nuclear folly.
Mitt Romney
#17. The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.
David Hume
#18. 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
#19. I once heard a learned man say, "Every evil has its remedy, except folly. To reprimand an obstinate fool or to preach to a dolt is like writing upon the water. Christ healed the blind, the halt, the palsied, and the leprous. But the fool He could not cure."
Khalil Gibran
#20. He who overcomes fear has overcome a hundred hurdles.
He who overcomes failiure has overcome a thousand hurdles.
He who overcomes folly has overcome a million hurdles.
He who overcomes his faults has overcome countless hurdles.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#21. Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself.
Sinclair Lewis
#22. Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know theyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, know what thou canst work at.
Thomas Carlyle
#23. Knowing the future is the flower of the Way, and the beginning of folly.
Laozi
#24. Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.
Tracy Chevalier
#25. Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent.
Aldous Huxley
#26. That folly of old age which is called dotage is peculiar to silly old men, not to age itself.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#27. The sheer folly of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought. Nuclear capability must be reduced to zero, globally, permanently. There is no other option.
Queen Noor Of Jordan
#28. 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
#30. Add a sprinkling of folly to your long deliberations.
Horace
#31. Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.
Barbara Tuchman
#32. 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
#33. Golf being a cold, calculating sort of game gives perhaps more scope for folly than any other. We have all the time in the world to make up our minds as to what is the wise thing to do and then we do the foolish one.
Bernard Darwin
#34. Love must kiss that mortal's eyesWho hopes to see fair Arcady.No gold can buy you entrance there;But beggared Love may go all bare-No wisdom won with weariness;But Love goes in with Folly's dress-No fame that wit could ever win;But only Love may lead Love in.
Henry Cuyler Bunner
#35. In war the most testing moments are those of peace , for a dead man lying in the grass makes the living see the world as it would be, but for their folly.
Andrei Makine
#36. Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.
Rex Stout
#37. Folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom.
Edith Wharton
#38. It is but one of the many follies of luxury which lead men to believe that plenty now is abundance always and fortune is everlasting. Pure folly. My
Stephen R. Lawhead
#39. There is only one greater folly than that of the fool who says in his heart there is no God, and that is the folly of the people that says with its head that it does not know whether there is a God or not.
Otto Von Bismarck
#40. If someone tries to use you as a tool, you shouldn't mind it, because it is their choice and folly, not yours.
Jude Morgan
#41. Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.
Bertrand Russell
#42. Folly plots a fool's death from the moment they become friends. Wisdom bestows blessings upon a wise man from the moment they wed.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#43. And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.
Edgar Allan Poe
#44. As I remember his laugh, there was nothing mad about it, it was more like the laugh of someone who has been the victim of a practical joke, a farce in which he had believed until suddenly he realized his folly.
Guy Sajer
#45. The thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did; saying that which is made, is, and that which made it, is not. But this folly is infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing.
Jeremy Taylor
#46. Folly enlarges men's desires while it lessens their capacities.
Robert South
#47. We say that every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment. We measure our friends so. We know, they have intervals of folly, whereof we take no heed, but wait the reappearings of the genius, which are sure and beautiful.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#48. Christianity has no ceremonial. It has forms, for forms are essential to order; but it disdains the folly of attempting to reinforce the religion of the heart by the antics of the mind.
George Croly
#49. If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice.
John Steinbeck
#50. 8I will hear what God the LORD will speak, For He will speak peace To His people and to His saints; But let them not turn back to folly.
Anonymous
#51. But if the folly of men made one angry one would pass one's life in a state of chronic ire.
W. Somerset Maugham
#52. In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.
George Eliot
#53. One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom anpther's folly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#54. 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
#55. Music is made one of Satan's most attractive agencies to ensnare souls; but, when turned to a good account, it is a blessing. When abused, it leads the unconsecrated to pride, vanity, and folly.
Ellen G. White
#56. Mausoleum, n: the final and funniest folly of the rich.
Ambrose Bierce
#57. What is the holding of breath? It is a flight from the Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life.
Hermann Hesse
#58. February ... Now more than ever one must remind oneself that it is wasteful folly to wish that time would pass, or - as the puritanical old saying used to have it - to kill time until it kills you.
Joseph Wood Krutch
#59. A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw
#60. All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest of Jove's daughters, shuts men's eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.
Homer
#61. Ignorance of ourselves must be folly.
A.L.O.E.
#62. Part of that, I think, is being able to tune out folly, as distinguished from recognizing wisdom. You've got whole categories of things you just bat away so your brain isn't cluttered with them. That way, you're better able to pick up a few sensible things to do.
Charlie Munger
#64. The captain looked defensive. "You regard our customs as primitive?"
Every society to its own tastes, captain. The wisdom of one society would be folly for another. Who is qualified to judge? Only the universe, which passes the judgment of survival on all peoples.
Walter M. Miller Jr.
#65. When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.
John Locke
#66. Affectation is to be always distinguished from hypocrisy as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities, which we might with innocence and safety, be known to want. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly.
Samuel Johnson
#67. Silence is not always a sign of wisdom, but babbling is ever a mark of folly.
Benjamin Franklin
#68. Let the politicians debate equal pay and pursue the folly of a war on women in America.
Brian Kilmeade
#69. The folly of others is ever most ridiculous to those who are themselves most foolish.
Oliver Goldsmith
#70. The method by which the fool arrives at his folly was as dear to him as the ultimate wisdom of the wise.
Oscar Wilde
#71. All the best novels are about one thing: how we go on. The characters must survive the fallout of their own cowardice, folly, denial or misguided passion. They squander what matters most, and still they pick up the pieces.
Julia Glass
#72. Spurgeon used his wit to provoke laughter in private and in public. He said in one of his sermons, "If by a laugh I can make men see the folly of an error better than in any other way, they shall laugh.
Randy Alcorn
#73. The busy bee has no time for sorrow. The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no
William Blake
#74. Because this age and the next age
Engender in the ditch,
No man can know a happy man
From any passing wretch,
If Folly link with Elegance
No man knows which is which ...
William Butler Yeats
#75. It is not, then, in the content or substance of folly that its difference from truth lies, but in where it comes from. It comes not from 'the wise man's mouth' but from the mouth of the subject assumed not to know and speak the truth.
J.M. Coetzee
#76. No one attacks loose-thinking and folly with half the precision and zest of Thomas Szasz.
John Leo
#77. The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in all places, and men of genius, in their walks, at table, and amidst assemblies, turning the eye of the the mind upwards, can form an artificial solitude; retired amidst a crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly.
Isaac D'Israeli
#78. [The proposed establishment] will have a ... tendency to banish our Citizens ... To superadd a fresh motive to emigration by revoking the liberty which they now enjoy, would be the same species of folly which has dishonoured and depopulated flourishing kingdoms.
James Madison
#79. Ardent, intelligent, sweet, sensitive, cultivated, erudite. These are the adjectives of praise in an androgynous world. Those who consider them epithets of shame or folly ought not to be trusted with leadership, for they will be men hot for power and revenge, certain of right and wrong.
Carolyn Heilbrun
#80. Judge not the preacher; for he is thy judge:
If thou mislike him, thou conceiv'st him not.
God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge
To pick out treasures from an earthen pot.
The worst speak something good. If all want sense,
God takes a text, and preaches patience.
George Herbert
#81. 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
#82. Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.
Beverly Sills
#83. The picture placed the busts between Adds to the thought much strength; Wisdom and Wit are little seen, But Folly 's at full length.
Jane Brereton
#84. To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly.
Teresa Of Avila
#85. Children would die of terror if they knew the folly and ignorance of their caretakers.
Mason Cooley
#86. What an absolute folly love was. Talk about a flawed concept.
Richard Russo
#87. Tyranny is usually tempered with assassination, and Democracy must be tempered with culture. In the absence of this, it turns into a representation of collective folly.
John Stuart Mackenzie
#88. The Folly had last been refurbished in the 1930s when the British establishment firmly believed that central heating was the work, if not of the devil per se, then definitely evil foreigners bent on weakening the hardy British spirit.
Ben Aaronovitch
#89. The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.
William Blake
#91. 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
#92. it is so inevitable that men will be fools that it is only by another shift of folly that one might not be
Blaise Pascal
#93. The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.
William Blake
#94. I look at things and think about them,' Folly replied. 'And use my intuition, of course, and deduction and induction, as well as any historical or theoretical models that seem to apply.
Jim Butcher
#95. How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?
Blaise Pascal
#96. Must this with farce and folly rack my
head unpunish'd ? that with sing-song,
Whine me dead?
Juvenal
#97. I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler.
Wilhelm Canaris
#98. I have had my dance with Folly, nor do I shirk the blame;
I have sipped the so-called Wine of Life and paid the price of shame;
But I know that I shall find surcease, the rest my spirit craves,
Where the rainbows play in the flying spray,
'Mid the keen salt kiss of the waves.
Eugene O'Neill
#99. When a generation talks just to itself, it becomes more filled with folly than it might have otherwise.
Stewart Brand
#100. For there is no folly so great as keeping one's sorrows hidden.
Anthony Trollope
