Quotes About Folly

I don't know why we behaved like lunatics.

But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.

Sono persuaso che nessuno sciocco ha mai fatto un patto col diavolo per la propria anima: lo sciocco è troppo sciocco, oppure il diavolo è troppo diavolo.

How the right hand became disabled would be a long story for the left to tell," he wrote to William Stephens Smith. "It was by one of those follies from which good cannot come, but ill may.

The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.

It is very seldom that one encounters what would appear to be sheer unadulterated evil in a human face; an evil, I mean, active, deliberate, deadly, dangerous. Folly, heedlessness, vanity, pride, craft, meanness, stupidity - yes. But even Iagos in this world are few, and devilry is as rare as witchcraft. ("Bad Company")

There is a tragedy in unloved years, And in those passionate hours by love deceived, In lips unkissed and hopes too soon bereaved, And youth's high courage which no strength could save, And manhood's web of fate by folly weaved, And grey-haired grief brought down into the grave. Who shall distinguish truly and be wise 'Twixt grief and grief, 'twixt night and night?

The soil of the sacred city is filled with the remnants of empires that miscalculated. Jerusalem is the city of God. But it is also a gravestone to the folly of man. – Holy Father

Yahweh is the central reality in the universe, and seeking to understand life apart from him is folly.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

JIt could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

Freedom of speech is a foundation of democracy, because without it citizens can't share their observations on folly and injustice or collectively challenge the authority that maintains them.

What's worth living for? what's worth dying for? what's completely foolish to pursue?

She wondered what archaeologists in the year A.D. 10,000 would find when they uncovered the relics of the twentieth century; would there, she wondered, be any signs of intelligence remaining? or only vestiges of folly and violence?

He actually caught himself saying things like Yippee, as he pranced ridiculously round the house.

Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on which the Galaxy was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox had announced his intention to run as President it was more or less a fait accompli: he was ideal presidency fodder.*

The only constant in this town is its yearning for imbecility.

Pride goes before destruction.

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.

There are three things that are real: God, human folly, and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension. So we must do what we can with the third. —John F. Kennedy

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

The Bay of Pigs became a metaphor for feckless folly and failure.

Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.

A new political-entertainment class has moved into the noisy void once occupied by the sage pontiffs of yore, a class just as polarized as our partisan divide: one side holding up a fun-house mirror to folly, the other side reveling in its own warped reflection.