Folly Quotes - Page 36

• For a man to think he can fulfil his destiny without a woman is a misunderstanding, a miscalculation; it is reckless and folly. Certainly a woman is not everthing, but everything depends on her.

  Yasmina Khadra

  Destiny, Men, Thinking

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• Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.

  William Faulkner

  Strange, Monotonous, Just One

  William Faulkner (2011). “Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner”, p.91, Vintage

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• Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it from me. I wish to spread it and bestow it, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Wise, Hands, Wish

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• Just like that. Gone forever. They will not grow old together. They will never live on a beach by the sea, their hair turned white, dancing in a living room to Billie Holiday or Nat Cole. They will not enter a New York club at midnight and show the poor hip-hop fools how to dance. They will not chuckle together over the endless folly of the world, its vanities and stupid ambitions. They will not hug each other in any chilly New York dawn. Oh, Mary Lou. My baby. My love.

  Pete Hamill

  Baby, Beach, New York

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• There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Pain, Lying, Fate

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.423, Simon and Schuster

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• I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.  Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.

  Jane Austen

  Silly, People, Done

  1816 Emma, ch.26.

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• Folly and desperation are ofttimes hard to tell apart.

  George R. R. Martin

  Desperation, Hard

  George R. R. Martin (2003). “A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book One”, p.418, Bantam

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• Every day I observe more and more the folly of judging of others by ourselves; and I have so much trouble with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agitation, that I am well content to let others pursue their own course, if they only allow me the same privilege.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Heart, Judging, Privilege

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “The Sorrows of Young Werther: Top Classic of German”, p.32, 谷月社

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• That is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones.

  Neil Gaiman

  Sweet, Men, Flesh

  Neil Gaiman (2011). “American Gods”, p.81, Hachette UK

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• I am the One, and I see all. But the blind man in Apartment 1-A is blind in many ways, as are all human beings, even those with functioning eyes. They are blind to their folly, to their ignorance, to their history, to the future that they will make for themselves. A future born of self-loathing.

  Dean Koontz

  Fear, Ignorance, Eye

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• I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Passion, Envy, Hatred

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• The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.

  Alan Watts

  Wise, Philosophy, Ignorance

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• If I could wish the Kingslayer back in chains I would. You freed him without my knowledge or consent... but what you did, I know you did for love. For Arya and Sansa, and out of grief for Bran and Rickon. Love’s not always wise, I’ve learned. It can lead us to great folly, but we follow our hearts... wherever they take us. Don’t we, Mother?

  George R. R. Martin

  Wise, Mother, Grief

  George R. R. Martin (2012). “George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons”, p.1621, Bantam

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• When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.

  E. M. Forster

  Blessed, Past, Long

  "Maurice". Book by E. M. Forster, part two, 1971.

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• No, no," said Taran slowly, "It would be folly to think of attacking them." He smiled quickly at Fflewddur. "The bards would sing of us," he admitted, "but we'd be in no position to appreciate it.

  Lloyd Alexander

  Thinking, Appreciate, Would Be

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• It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Quality, Faults, Failing

  Jerome K. Jerome (2006). “Jerome K. Jerome: 14 Books in 1”, p.602, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• It is a curious and painful fact that almost all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in during the long history of medical folly have been such as caused acute suffering to the patient. When anesthetics were discovered, pious people considered them an attempt to evade the will of God. It was pointed out, however, that when God extracted Adam's rib He put him into a deep sleep. This proved that anesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought to suffer, because of the curse of Eve.

  Bertrand Russell

  Pain, Sleep, Science

  Bertrand Russell (1972). “Atheism: collected essays, 1943-1949”, Arno Pr

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• It is a folly second to none; to try to improve the world.

  Moliere

  Trying, Earth, World

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• [Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue's game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!

  Adam Sedgwick

  Horse, Science, Games

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• [It] is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.

  Richard Dawkins

  People, Religion, Atheism

  Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene”, p.330, Oxford University Press, USA

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• What if God were not exactly truth, and if this could be proved? And if he were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Ambition, Vanity, Words Of Wisdom

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “The Dawn of Day”, p.80, Friedrich Nietzsche

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• In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

  Leo Rosten

  Fear, Book, Dark

  Leo Calvin Rosten (1959). “The return of H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n”

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• Those that think that wealth is the proper thing for them cannot give up their revenues; those that seek distinction cannot give up the thought of fame; those that cleave to power cannot give the handle of it to others. While they hold their grasp of those things, they are afraid of losing them. When they let them go, they are grieved and they will not look at a single example, from which they might perceive the folly of their restless pursuits - such men are under the doom of heaven.

  Zhuangzi

  Giving Up, Men, Thinking

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• Infantry must move forward to close with the enemy. It must shoot in order to move.... To halt under fire is folly. To halt under fire and not fire back is suicide. Officers must set the example

  George S. Patton

  Suicide, Military, Moving

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• One would always want to think of oneself as being on the side of love, ready to recognize it and wish it well -but, when confronted with it in others, one so often resented it, questioned its true nature, secretly dismissed the particular instance as folly or promiscuity. Was it merely jealousy, or a reluctance to admit so noble and enviable a sentiment in anyone but oneself?

  Shirley Hazzard

  Love, Thinking, Wish

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