Fool Quotes - Page 16

• ...Don't let me ever hear you say, 'I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth.' Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of 'literature'? That means fiction, too, stupid.

  John Waters

  Stupid, Mean, Fiction

  8 Copy quote

• Even in the tragedies, Shakespeare always put in parts for the comic actors because his audience was mixed. He puts in people who talk like aristocrats. He puts in idiots and fools. He puts in certain middle-range characters. And when you go to the Globe, you realize how that all works. The people who paid more sat in seats around the edge. Everybody else paid a penny. They put it into a tin box - that's why we call it the "box office." They stood in the pit, but they were very close, so when Hamlet was doing his soliloquy, it was addressed to you, the audience - right there.

  Margaret Atwood

  Character, People, Office

  "Margaret Atwood Remixes Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as a Prison Drama". Interview With Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. September/October 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science is a way for us to not fool ourselves.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Way

  4 Copy quote

• Alas! how has the social spirit of Christianity been perverted by fools at one time, and by knaves and bigots at another; by the self-tormentors of the cell, and the all-tormentors of the conclave!

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Self, Cells, Knaves

  4 Copy quote

• Faith may rise into miracles of might, as some few wise men have shown; faith may sink into credulities of weakness, as the mass of fools have witnessed.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Faith, Wise, Men

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1851). “Tupper's Proverbial philosophy: a book of thoughts and arguments, originally treated : first and second series”, p.224

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing shows the kind of fool you are as quick as your tongue.

  Kate Langley Bosher

  Talking, Speech, Tongue

  4 Copy quote

• The same principle leads us to neglect a man of merit that induces us to admire a fool.
  [Fr., Du meme fonds dont on neglige un homme de merite l'on sait encore admirer un sot.]

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Men, Principles, Merit

  "Les Caractères", XII, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 510-11,

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• How to fool yourself into feeling younger: When you go to restaurants, always check a coat and a skateboard.

  Joan Rivers

  Feelings, Age, Coats

  4 Copy quote

• The best thing next to wit is a consciousness that it is not in us; without wit, a man might then know how to behave himself, so as not to appear to be a fool or a coxcomb.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Men, Might, Next

  7 Copy quote

• The greatest fool is he who thinks he is not one and all others are.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Thinking

  Baltasar Gracian, Baltasar Gracián y Morales (2004). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.115, Shambhala Publications

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one's self a fool.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Hero, Self, Doubt

  The Blithedale Romance ch. 2 (1852)

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bets at first were fool-traps, where the wise like spiders lay in ambush for the flies.

  John Dryden

  Wise, Gambling, Spiders

  John Dryden, Sir Walter Scott (1808). “The works of John Dryden now first collected ...”, p.123

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• People have no right to make fools of themselves, unless they have no relations to blush for them.

  Thomas Chandler Haliburton

  People, Relation

  Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1856). “Wise-saws: Or, Sam Slick in Search of a Wife”, p.185

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I lose my patience, and I own it too,
  When works are censur'd, not as bad but new;
  While if our Elders break all reason's laws,
  These fools demand not pardon but Applause.

  Alexander Pope

  Law, Criticism, Demand

  Alexander Pope, William Warburton (1751). “The Works of Alexander Pope: Esq., with His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements; as They Were Delivered to the Editor a Little Before His Death; Together with the Commentaries and Notes of Mr. Warburton”, p.129

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fashion, leader of a chatt'ring train,
  Whom man for his own hurt permits to reign
  Who shifts and changes all things but his shape,
  And would degrade her vot'ry to an ape,
  The fruitful parent of abuse and wrong,
  Holds a usurp'd dominion o'er his tongue,
  There sits and prompts him with his own disgrace,
  Prescribes the theme, the tone, and the grimace,
  And when accomplish'd in her wayward school,
  Calls gentleman whom she has made a fool.

  William Cowper

  Fashion, Hurt, School

  William Cowper (1837). “Poems; to which is prefixed a memoir of the author by J. M'Diarmid”, p.217

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I fancy the character of a poet is in every country the same,--fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future; his conversation that of a man of sense, his actions those of a fool.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Country, Character, Men

  Oliver Goldsmith (1835). “His Works”, p.241

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Titles and mottoes to books are like escutcheons and dignities in the hands of a king. The wise sometimes condescend to accept of them; but none but a fool would imagine them of any real importance. We ought to depend upon intrinsic merit, and not the slender helps of the title.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Wise, Kings, Real

  Oliver Goldsmith (1820). “Essays and The Bee”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Were I to be angry at men being fools, I could here find ample room for declamation; but, alas! I have been a fool myself; and why should I be angry with them for being something so natural to every child of humanity?

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Children, Men, Humanity

  Oliver Goldsmith (1835). “His Works”, p.168

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• He was the freeman whom the truth made free;
  Who first of all, the bands of Satan broke;
  Who broke the bands of sin, and for his soul,
  In spite of fools consulted seriously.

  Robert Pollok

  Freedom, Soul, Firsts

  Robert Pollok (1833). “The Course of Time, a Poem: With a Memoir of the Author, an Introductory Notice, a Copious Index, and an Analysis Prefixed to Each Book”, p.74

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anticipated rents, and bills unpaid,
  Force many a shining youth into the shade,
  Not to redeem his time, but his estate,
  And play the fool, but at the cheaper rate.

  William Cowper

  Play, Shining, Debt

  William Cowper (1830). “Poems ... With a sketch of his life and a vindication of his religious principles and character. Third edition, corrected and enlarged. [With a portrait.]”, p.145

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
  One time it was a woman's face, or worse--
  The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
  Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
  Than this accustomed toil.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hands, Land, Poetry

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.38, Hayes Barton Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You cannot fool an audience.

  Marian Anderson

  Audience

  Marian Anderson (1956). “My Lord, what a Morning: An Autobiography”, University of Illinois Press

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can fool people some of the time, but you can't fool them all of the time.

  Aesop

  Honesty, People

  Albert Cullum, Aesop (1972). “Aesop in the afternoon”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• How often have I not heard a perfectly intelligent female says, in the tone of one clinching an argument, 'Edgar says -- ' And all the time you are perfectly aware that Edgar is a perfect fool.

  Agatha Christie

  Intelligent, Perfect, Tone

  Agatha Christie (1931). “The man in the brown suit”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.

  Edmund Burke

  Wise, Men, Mad

  Edmund Burke, Robert MONTGOMERY (Author of “Satan.”.) (1853). “Edmund Burke: being first principles selected from his writings. With an introductory essay by Robert Montgomery”, p.153

  7 Copy quote

  Show source