Folly Quotes - Page 37

• 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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• How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but a fool does? Because a cripple recognizes that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly; if it were not so, we should feel pity and not anger.

  Blaise Pascal

  Silly, Insanity, Doe

  Blaise Pascal (2007). “Thoughts”, p.34, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Race, Skills

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Impact of Science on Society”, p.88, Routledge

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• Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame.

  Jane Austen

  Death, Rude, Lovely

  1816 Emma, ch.45. ee Goldsmith 361:47.

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• Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly.

  Plutarch

  Extravagance, Poverty, Poor

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• Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the five following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year.

  Laurence Sterne

  Funny, Book, Years

  Laurence Sterne (1834). “The Works of Laurence Sterne, in One Volume”, p.258

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• The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.

  Mary McCarthy

  Real, Venice, Essentials

  Mary McCarthy (1956). “Venice observed”

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• The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something [God] exists, could scarcely suggest itself to Reason. For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  God, Ideas, Doe

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• He who has been impoverished for a long timewho has long stood before the door of the mighty in darkness and begged for alms,has filled his heart with bitterness so that it resembles a sponge full of gall; he knows about the injustice and folly of all human action and sometimes his lips tremble with rage and a stifled scream.

  Stefan Zweig

  Heart, Doors, Long

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• We can't forever be spending our lives paying for political follies that never gave us anything but always took from us, and I amcontent with the narrowest metes and bounds provided I have peace and quiet for work.

  Stefan Zweig

  Forever, Political, Contentment

  Stefan Zweig, Friderike Maria Burger Winternitz Zweig, Henry G. Alsberg (1954). “Stefan and Friderike Zweig: their correspondence, 1912-1942”

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• Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.

  Stefan Zweig

  Psychology, Understanding, Intellectual

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• Since love is folly, a foolish woman is more dangerous than a wise one.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Love, Wise, Women

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• Those who get their living by their daily labor . . . have nothing to stir them up to be serviceable but their wants which it is a prudence to relieve, but folly to cure.

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Want, Cures, Prudence

  Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.101, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Please do not take counsel of women who are so prejudiced that, as I once heard said, they would not allow a male grasshopper to chirp on their lawn; but out of your own great heart, refuse to set an example to such folly.

  Frances E. Willard

  Heart, Males, Example

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• Every one knows about the young man who falls in love with the chorus-girl because she can kick his hat off, and his sister's friends can't or won't. But the youth who marries her, expecting that all her departures from convention will be as agile or as delightful to him as that, is still the classic example of folly.

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Marriage, Girl, Falling In Love

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1920). “Modes and Morals”

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• The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most willfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the doer together make ever one sober fact.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Men, Foolish Man

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.236, Delphi Classics

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• Children would die of terror if they knew the folly and ignorance of their caretakers.

  Mason Cooley

  Children, Ignorance, Terror

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• If folly disappeared, wit would starve.

  Mason Cooley

  Wit, Ifs

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• I do not regret the folly of my youth, but the timidity.

  Mason Cooley

  Regret, Fear, Youth

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• Frivolous sorrow is folly. Frivolous enjoyment is not.

  Mason Cooley

  Joy, Sorrow, Frivolous

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• Most friendship is faining, most loving mere folly:
  Then, heigh-ho, the holly.
  This life is most jolly.

  William Shakespeare

  Friendship, Hollies, Life Is

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• Sulking is silent because speaking would reveal its folly.

  Mason Cooley

  Sulking, Resentment, Silent

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• You desire to be learned, wealthy, and great, without labor; it is one of the follies still extant in the world.

  George Pope Morris

  Desire, World, Wealthy

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• When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children. We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Dark, Matter

  "The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1901.

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• It is the folly of weak-minded people, to imagine they are what flattery or conceit represents them; and that it is useless for them to be what they are not, since they seem already to have acquired the reputation of it.

  Norm MacDonald

  People, Useless, Reputation

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