quotes about Folly
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I was also built from delusional optimism and folly.
-- A.S. King -
When knowledge is limited - it leads to folly... When knowledge exceeds a certain limit, it leads to exploitation.
-- Abu Bakr -
Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Opponents of globalisation may see it as a new folly, but it is neither particularly new, nor, in general, a folly.
-- Amartya Sen -
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Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.
-- Antonin Scalia -
Quantum est in rebus inane! How much folly there is in human affairs.
-- Aulus Persius Flaccus -
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Knowledge without wisdom is double folly.
-- Baltasar Gracian -
Beauty and folly are generally companions.
-- Baltasar Gracian -
Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.
-- Barbara TuchmanSource : Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.382, Random House
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Folly is as great as the sea, it will compass anything.
-- BolesÅ‚aw PrusSource : "Pharaoh". Book by Bolesław Prus, 1897.
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Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce.
-- Charles Churchill -
To take my work seriously would be the height of folly.
-- Edward Gorey -
Despair is deadly sin, but worse, it is mortal folly.
-- Ellis PetersSource : Ellis Peters (2016). “Brother Cadfael: The Complete Chronicles”, p.1400, Head of Zeus Ltd
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it has been long and justly remarked, that folly has ever sought alliance with beauty.
-- Fanny Burney -
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It was not one folly that Shakespeare talked about. If Love truly is but a myriad of follies then I have committed them all, that can mean only one thing - I loved her truly, madly, deeply!
-- Faraaz Kazi -
Life is hollow without health and freedom. To seek one while ignoring the other is folly.
-- G. Edward Griffin -
Happiness and beauty are by-products. Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty.
-- George Bernard Shaw -
Folly and desperation are ofttimes hard to tell apart.
-- George R. R. Martin -
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One's conscience reproaches one much more stingingly for one's follies than one's crimes.
-- Geraldine JewsburySource : Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury (1892). “Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle”
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The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register.
-- Hans F. Sennholz -
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There is no folly like the folly of the wise.
-- Jacqueline Carey -
I have learned yet again (this has been going on all my life) what folly it is to take any thing for granted without examining it skeptically.
-- Jane Jacobs -
Alas! we see that the small have always suffered for the follies of the great. [Fr., Helas! on voit que de tout temps Les Petits ont pati des sottises des grands.]
-- Jean de La Fontaine -
Where consequence ceases, there folly, restlessness and misery begin.
-- Johann Kaspar Lavater -
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That wisdom which cannot teach me that God is love, shall ever pass for folly.
-- John Owen -
Every man's follies are the caricature resemblances of his wisdom.
-- John SterlingSource : John Sterling (1848). “Essays and Tales: Fragments from the travels of Theodore Elbert. Thoughts. Tales and apologues”, p.137
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We all have our youthful follies, embarassing to recall -- but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success.
-- John WyndhamSource : John Wyndham (2003). “The Day of the Triffids”
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It is folly to seek the approbation of any being besides the Supreme.
-- Joseph Addison -
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Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.
-- Joseph Conrad -
Experience increases our wisdom but doesn't reduce our follies.
-- Josh Billings -
It is sheer folly when all is gone to lose even one's passage money.
-- Juvenal -
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I prefer silent prudence to loquacious folly. [Lat., Malo indisertam prudentiam, quam loquacem stultitiam.]
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
To stumble twice against the same stone, is a proverbial disgrace. [Lat., Culpa enim illa, bis ad eundem, vulgari reprehensa proverbio est.]
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
All places are filled with fools. [Lat., Stultorum plenea sunt omnia.]
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
Heed the still small voice that so seldom leads us wrong, and never into folly.
-- Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand -
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Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.
-- Nikos Kazantzakis -
The shortest follies are the best. [Fr., Les plus courtes folies sont les meilleures.]
-- Pierre CharronSource : "Las Sagesse". Book I, Chapter 3, 1601.
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It is sheer folly to take unwilling hounds to the chase.
-- Plautus -
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... then he offers me his arm. As I take it, I wonder what folly decreed that women cannot walk unassisted.
-- R.L. LaFevers -
Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.
-- Rex Stout -
A thing can be true and still be desperate folly.
-- Richard AdamsSource : Richard Adams (2014). “Watership Down”, p.94, Oneworld Publications
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It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
-- Richard Whately -
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Meddling with another man's folly is always thankless work.
-- Rudyard Kipling -
Zeal without knowledge is the sister of folly.
-- Sir John Davies -
There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.
-- William Graham Sumner -
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love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit
-- William Shakespeare -
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
-- William Shakespeare -
The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.
-- William Shakespeare -
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One does not simply tell an archangel they have devoted their life to a folly.
-- C. J. Anderson -
And still I persist in wondering whether folly must always be our nemesis.
-- Edgar PangbornSource : Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, Terry Carr, Edgar Pangborn (1973). “An exaltation of stars: transcendental adventures in science fiction”, Ultramarine Pub Co
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It is fortunate that Literature is in no ways injured by the follies of Collectors, since though they preserve the worthless, they necessarily defend the good.
-- Isaac D'Israeli -
We must accustom ourselves to the follies of others and not be astonished at the foolishness that takes place in our presence.
-- Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable -
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The essence of forgiveness is seeing our humanness and seeing that we all have our limitations and follies.
-- Mark Coleman -
Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.
-- Richard Cecil -
To act without knowledge is folly, to know without acting is cowardice.
-- Dominique Pire -
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Experiment is folly when experience shows the way.
-- Roger Babson -
Wherever you look there is so much loss and folly to contemplate.
-- Rosie ThomasSource : Rosie Thomas (2016). “Iris and Ruby: A Novel”, p.150, The Overlook Press
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For the subtlest folly proceeds from the subtlest wisdom.
-- John WebsterSource : John Webster, John Russell Brown (1997). “The Duchess of Malfi: John Webster”, p.76, Manchester University Press