Folly Quotes - Page 25

• America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Country, America, Grows

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• Nothing is difficult to mortals; we strive to reach heaven itself in our folly.
  [Lat., Nil mortalibus arduum est;
  Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia.]

  Horace

  Heaven, Strive, Difficult

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• Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Ambition, Stupidity, Serious

  "Chamfort: Reflections on Life, Love & Society". Book by Nicolas Chamfort, 1795.

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• It is folly to waste labour about trifles.

  Martial

  Waste, Trifles, Labour

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• It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.

  Jonathan Swift

  Weed, Mind, Fields

  Jonathan Swift (1843). “Works: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers Not Hitherto Published”, p.836

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• Fond of those hives where folly reigns,
  And cards and scandal are the chains,
  Where the pert virgin slights a name,
  And scorns to redden into shame.

  Jonathan Swift

  Names, Reign, Scandal

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• There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

  Jonathan Swift

  Vanity, Skills, Vices

  Jonathan Swift, John Hawkesworth (1755). “The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin: Accurately Revised in Six Volumes, Adorned with Copper-plates : with Some Account of the Author's Life and Notes Historical and Explanatory”

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• It is sheer folly to take unwilling hounds to the chase.

  Plautus

  Hounds, Unwilling, Sheer

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• To ask that which is unjust at the hands of the just, is an injustice in itself; to expect that which is just from the unjust, is simple folly.

  Plautus

  Simple, Hands, Unjust

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• There is no folly of which a man who is not a fool cannot get rid except vanity; of this nothing cures a man except experience of its bad consequences, if indeed anything can cure it.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Men, Vanity, Fool

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• Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Iron, Hatred, Scorpions

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.46

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• Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.

  William Hazlitt

  Passion, Pride, Thinking

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1466, Delphi Classics

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• Beauty is the greatest of human powers. Any power without counterbalance or control becomes autocratic and leads to abuse and to folly. Despotism in a government is insanity; in woman, fantasy.

  Honore de Balzac

  Beauty, Power, Government

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• Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Ignorance, Pedants, Disgusting

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.35

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• We are more heavily taxed by our idleness, pride and folly than we are taxed by government.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Pride, Government, Idleness

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• There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.

  Joseph Addison

  Eye, Mirth, Innocence

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.282

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• If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Laughing, Vices

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.324

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• It is folly to seek the approbation of any being besides the Supreme.

  Joseph Addison

  God, Supreme

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• Mausoleum, n: the final and funniest folly of the rich.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Dying, Finals, Rich

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2460, Delphi Classics

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• Excess in apparel is another costly folly. The very trimming of the vain world would clothe all the naked ones.

  William Penn

  Excess, World, Naked

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.28, Courier Corporation

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• It is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar. There are faces I can never look upon without emotion, there are names I can never hear spoken without almost starting.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Disappointment, Passion, Names

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.1892, Delphi Classics

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• Who can describe
  Women's hypocrisies! their subtle wiles,
  Betraying smiles, feign'd tears, inconstancies!
  Their painted outsides, and corrupted minds,
  The sum of all their follies, and their falsehoods.

  Thomas Otway

  Women, Anger, Hypocrisy

  Thomas Otway (1812). “The Works of Thomas Otway: Consisting of His Plays, Poems, and Letters”, p.156

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• That folly of old age which is called dotage is peculiar to silly old men, not to age itself.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Silly, Men, Age

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• I prefer silent prudence to loquacious folly.
  [Lat., Malo indisertam prudentiam, quam loquacem stultitiam.]

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Silent, Prudence

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• Men, when their actions succeed not as they would, are always ready to impute the blame thereof to heaven, so as to excuse their own follies.

  Edmund Spenser

  Men, Heaven, Succeed

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