Folly Quotes - Page 36

• How arrogant - how very far from humility - would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly - thats not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible.

  Sheldon Whitehouse

  Humility, Self, Miracle

  "Sheldon Whitehouse: God Won’t Save Us From Climate Catastrophe" by Michael McAuliff, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 8, 2013.

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• If kissing is man's greatest invention, then fermentation and patriarchy compete with the domestication of animals for the distinction of being man's worst folly, and no doubt the three combined long ago, the one growing out of the others, to foster civilization and lead Western humanity to its present state of decline.

  Tom Robbins

  Kissing, Men, Animal

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.285, Bantam

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• It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Education, Saint, Speak

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• People should get married because they have finally seen the folly of being single: "Oh, this is all just kind of a bad magic trick. I just keep bending over to reach for this wallet on a string. How much longer am I gonna do that?"

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Being Single, People, Magic

  "Jerry Seinfeld Wants to Save Your Marriage". Interview with Lucy Kaylin, www.oprah.com. April 2010.

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• To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,
  Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,
  And so your follies fight against yourself.
  Fear, and be slain--so worse can come to fight;
  And fight and die is death destroying death,
  Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.

  William Shakespeare

  Fear, Fighting, Giving

  William Shakespeare (2013). “The Wars of the Roses In Plain and Simple English: Includes Henry VI Parts 1 - 3 & Richard III, Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V”, p.1097, BookCaps Study Guides

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• A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' th' forest,
  A motley fool! a miserable world!
  As I do live by food, I met a fool
  Who laid him down and basked him in the sun
  And railed on Lady Fortune in good terms,
  In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.

  William Shakespeare

  World, Down And, Fool

  1599-1600 Jaques. AsYou Like It, act 2, sc.7, l.12-17.

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• Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me. Now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass; so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, any by my friends I am abused; so that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two affirmatives, why then, the worse for my friends, and the better for my foes.

  William Shakespeare

  Kissing, Negatives Make, Two

  William Shakespeare, Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan (2000). “The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works”, p.1211, Cengage Learning EMEA

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• All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.

  Samuel Johnson

  Unnecessary, Vow, Given

  Samuel Johnson (2014). “The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Volume II: 1773-1776”, p.31, Princeton University Press

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• There is no jollitie but hath a smack of folly.
  [There is no jollity but hath a smack of folly.]

  George Herbert

  Smack

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• What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.

  Scarlett Thomas

  Eye, Light, Horizon

  Scarlett Thomas (2008). “The End Of Mr. Y”, p.30, Canongate Books

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• To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science.

  Ian Plimer

  Trying, Climate, Variables

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• The Church demonstrated the falsity and folly of Darwin's theories by showing that they contradicted the Mosaic account of creation, and now that the theories of Darwin having been fairly established, the Church says that the Mosaic account is true because it is in harmony with Darwin. Now, if it should turn out that Darwin was mistaken, what then?

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Atheism, Church, Mosaics

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1846, Library of Alexandria

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• There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Rights, May, Chance

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• An honest man is not accountable for the vice and folly of his trade, and therefore ought not to refuse the exercise of it. It is the custom of his country, and there is profit in it. We must live by the world, and such as we find it, so make use of it.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Country, Honesty, Exercise

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• A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbid as few things as possible; a wise legislature would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man cannot and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government?

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Wise, Children, Father

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• Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of church and state, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Yield, Mind

  Thomas Jefferson (2012). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 8: 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815: 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815”, p.212, Princeton University Press

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• Clever people are never credited with their follies: what a deprivation of human rights!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Clever, Rights, People

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• Knowledge without wisdom is double folly.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Wisdom

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• Because this age and the next age
  Engender in the ditch,
  No man can know a happy man
  From any passing wretch,
  If Folly link with Elegance
  No man knows which is which.

  William Butler Yeats

  Happiness, Men, Age

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.324, Simon and Schuster

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• I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wise, Wisdom, Children

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.57, Modern Library

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• Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

  William Hazlitt

  Family, Running, Blood

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.2020, Delphi Classics

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• I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me.

  Charles Dickens

  Believe, Party, Sarcasm

  Charles Dickens (2016). “Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit”, p.280, Xist Publishing

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• Working cuts down on both folly and wisdom.

  Mason Cooley

  Work, Cutting

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• Meddling with another man's folly is always thankless work.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Men, Meddling, Thankless

  Rudyard Kipling (2016). “Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated Edition): 5 Novels & 350+ Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Military Works and Autobiographical Writings from one of the most popular writers in England, known for The Jungle Book, Kim, The Man Who Would Be King”, p.747, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• For the gods, though slow to see, see well, whenever a man casting aside worship turns folly.

  Sophocles

  Men, Casting, Worship

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