Folly Quotes - Page 15

• Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.

  Jane Austen

  Ignorance, Hands, Facts

  Jane Austen (2013). “Persuasion In Modern English”, p.361, BookCaps Study Guides

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• A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pride, Past, May

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Journey to the Hebrides. Tales of the imagination. Prayers and sermons. Index”, p.356

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• As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.

  William James

  Sympathy, Lying, Justice

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.284, Harvard University Press

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• 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

  Giving, Perception, Enemy

  John Stuart Mill (1864). “Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical”, p.77

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• I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usaully goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.

  Thucydides

  Passion, Thinking, Hands

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.179, Simon and Schuster

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• Scientific advertising has altered many old plans and conceptions. It has proved many long established methods to be folly

  Claude C. Hopkins

  Long, Advertising, Method

  Claude C. Hopkins (2010). “Scientific Advertising”, p.82, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Politically, Swift was one of those people who are driven into a sort of perverse Toryism by the follies of the progressive party of the moment.

  George Orwell

  Party, People, Progressive

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism, 1946”

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• The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance

  Jane Austen

  Beautiful, Girl, Sex

  Jane Austen (2009). “Northanger Abbey”, p.69, Wild Jot Press

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• He who does not seek advice is a fool. His folly blinds him to Truth and makes him evil, stubborn, and a danger to his fellow man.

  Khalil Gibran

  Truth, Men, Evil

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• When a man has been guilty of any vice or folly, the best atonement he can make for it is to warn others not to fall into the like.

  Joseph Addison

  Fall, Men, Guilt

  Joseph Addison (1858). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.34

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• Go! you may call it madness, folly; You shall not chase my gloom away! There 's such a charm in melancholy I would not if I could be gay.

  Samuel Rogers

  Gay, May, Madness

  'To - , 1814'

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• A man loses his illusions first, his teeth second, and his follies last.

  Helen Rowland

  Men, Dental Work, Teeth

  Helen Rowland (1909). “Reflections of a Bachelor Girl”

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• Keep alive within you and bring under wise control that courage which makes you long to undertake great works, which others might consider it folly to attempt.

  Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

  Inspirational, Wise, Courage

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• Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he'd led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity - its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self.

  Tobias Wolff

  Teaching, Pride, Boys

  Tobias Wolff (2004). “Old School”, p.193, Vintage

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• Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.

  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

  Pain, Failure, Adversity

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• Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fate, Exercise, Men

  The Rambler, No 85, January 8, 1751.

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• Training- training is everything; training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us.

  Mark Twain

  Names, Training, Opinion

  Mark Twain (1889). “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, p.143, Createspace Independent Pub

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• There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

  Daniel Dennett

  Way, Polite, Theist

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• Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Men, Discovery, Innovation

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• But satire, ever moral, ever new, Delights the reader and instructs him, too. She, if good sense refine her sterling page, Oft shakes some rooted folly of the age.

  Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

  Age, Delight, Moral

  "Satires (Satire 9)". Book by Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux, 1716.

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• Money power means budget power and it is folly to imagine that the citizen can control government unless he can control its budget.

  E.C. Riegel

  Mean, Government, Money Power

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• Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As mans ingratitude Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho sing, heigh-ho unto the green holly Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then heigh-ho the holly This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, That dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend rememberd not.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Art, Winter

  'As You Like It' (1599) act 2, sc. 7, l. 174

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• And writers say, as the most forward bud
  Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
  Even so by love the young and tender wit
  Is turn'd to folly, blasting in the bud,
  Losing his verdure even in the prime,
  And all the fair effects of future hopes.

  William Shakespeare

  Blow, Stupidity, Bud

  William Shakespeare (1858). “The Plays of Shakespeare”, p.4

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• The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and Führer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity.

  Carl Jung

  Wise, Stupid, Men

  Carl Gustav Jung (1968). “The Collected Works”

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• The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.

  Warren Buffett

  People, Greed, Investing

  Financial Review, 1985.

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