Folly Quotes - Page 27

• London! the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome! With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.

  Samuel Johnson

  Home, Fate, Rome

  Samuel Johnson, Thomas Park (1811). “The poetical works of Samuel Johnson: collated with the best editions”, p.12

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• To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly.

  Samuel Johnson

  Secret, Guilt, Secrecy

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• Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song.

  John Milton

  Song, Sweet, Bird

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• Wine lead to folly, making even the wise to laugh immoderately, to dance, and to utter what had better have been kept silent.

  Homer

  Wise, Wine, Laughing

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• I prefer silent prudence to loquacious folly.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Silent, Prudence

  "De Oratore", III. 35, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 645-47,

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• Fashion--a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse.

  Charles Churchill

  Fashion, Knavery, Use

  1761 The Rosciad, l.455-6.

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• Though folly, robed in purple, shines, Though vice exhausts Peruvian mines, Yet shall they tremble and turn pale When satire wields her mighty flail.

  Charles Churchill

  Purple, Shining, Vices

  Charles Churchill (1822). “The Poems of Charles Churchill ...”, p.77

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• 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

  Heart, People, Doe

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• Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain; Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock, and together again Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain, Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall.

  Sidney Lanier

  Running, Pain, Fall

  Sidney Lanier (1999). “Poems of Sidney Lanier”, p.24, University of Georgia Press

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• Hypocrisy is folly. It is much easier, safer, and pleasanter to be the thing which a man aims to appear, than to keep up the appearance of being what he is not.

  Lord David Cecil

  Men, Hypocrisy, Appearance

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• Buying pollution credits is folly; it doesn't help the environment. Instead of using tax dollars to buy credits overseas, we'll use them at home.

  Stephen Harper

  Home, Buying, Dollars

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• It would be absolute folly to rule myself out of any job.

  Stuart Pearce

  Jobs, Would Be, England

  "Pearce: I want Sven job". www.mirror.co.uk. February 12, 2006.

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• The follies, vices, and consequent miseries of multitudes, displayed in a newspaper, are so many admonitions and warnings, so many beacons, continually burning, to turn others from the rocks on which they have been shipwrecked.

  Thomas Hartwell Horne

  Rocks, Warning, Vices

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• I originated a remark many years ago that I think has been copied more than any little thing that I've ever said, and I used it in the follies of 1922. I said America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we can't confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.

  Will Rogers

  War, Believe, Home

  "The Will Rogers Book". Book by Paula McSpadden Love, 1972.

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• No power of earth, or hell, men or devils, can possibly stand against the word of God; and hence it is the very height of folly and wild madness for any one to set up his thoughts or reasonings in opposition to the plain statements of Holy Scripture; and, on the other hand, it is the beginning and end of all true wisdom to submit in all things to the absolute authority of that Word which is settled forever in Heaven.

  Charles Henry Mackintosh

  Christian, Men, Hands

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• It is folly alone that stays the fugue of Youth and beats off touring Old Age.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Age, Youth, Beats

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• I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy.

  Harry Leslie Smith

  War, Iraq, Dubious

  "This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time" by Harry Leslie Smith, www.theguardian.com. November 8, 2013.

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• To forgive is to unlock the cage of another's folly to set ourselves free.

  Richard Paul Evans

  Forgiving, Cages

  Richard Paul Evans (2012). “The Road to Grace”, p.125, Simon and Schuster

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• The wise man has his follies, no less than the fool; but it has been said that herein lies the difference--the follies of the fool are known to the world, but hidden from himself; the follies of the wise are known to himself, but hidden from the world.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Wise, Wisdom, Lying

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.108

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• The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace'. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  War, Writing, Men

  Letter to his son Christopher Tolkien on August 09, 1945. "The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien", 1981.

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• It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly.

  William Faulkner

  Men, Lust, Proof

  William Faulkner (2011). “Selected Short Stories”, p.270, Modern Library

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• How many of us have been first attracted to reason, first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism from Rochefoucauld or La Bruyere.

  Bill Vaughan

  Thinking, Firsts, Moral

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• Without taste genius is only a sublime kind of folly. That sure touch which the lyre gives back the right note and nothing more, is even a rarer gift than the creative faculty itself.

  Bill Vaughan

  Giving, Creative, Sublime

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• It's folly that women measure their happiness with the pleasures of the bed, but they do. And when the pleasure cools or their man goes missing, all they once lived for turns dark and hateful.

  Euripides

  Dark, Men, Missing

  Euripides,, Peter Burian, Alan Shapiro (2011). “The Complete Euripides Volume V: Medea and Other Plays”, p.170, Oxford University Press

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• I know The past and thence I will essay to glean A warning for the future, so that man May profit by his errors, and derive Experience from his folly; For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Past, Men, Errors

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.98, Delphi Classics

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