Quotes About Folly

To confess my weakness, Ned, my ambition is so prevalent that I…would willingly risk my life, tho' not my character, to exalt my station. I'm confident that my youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it, but I mean to prepare the way for futurity… My folly makes me ashamed, yet Neddy we have seen such schemes successful when the projector is constant. I shall conclude saying I wish there was a war.

Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,And catch the manners living as they rise:Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Most critics, fond of subservient art still make the whole depend upon a part. They talk of principles, but notions prize And all to one loved folly sacrifice.

Some made coxcombs Nature meant but fools

The whole point of extravagance is to act like a fool and feel like a fool, but enjoy it.

La perfection n'existe pas ; la comprendre est le triomphe de l'intelligence humaine ; la désirer pour la posséder est la plus dangereuse des folies. P 29

The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture.

It behooves every American to encourage home manufactures, that our oppressors may feel through their pockets the effects of their blind folly.

Man is the inventor of stupidity.

Mrs. Rachel Bruner: [trying to goad Wolfe] I thought you were afraid of nobody and nothing. Nero Wolfe: [unruffled] I can dodge folly without backing into fear.

A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel.

Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.

What an absolute folly love was. Talk about a flawed concept.

people cling to folly as if it were their most prized possession, defending it, sometimes with violence, against the possibility of wisdom. It

Most everything is incredibly stupid.

Excess in Apparel is another costly Folly. The very Trimming of the vain World would cloath all the naked one.

The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman [Walpole] has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.

Wishers were ever fools

He uses his folly like a stalking horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.

The little foolery that wise men have makes a great show.

If you remember'st not the slightest follyThat ever love did make thee run into,Thou hast not lov'd.

Man's wisdom is his best friend folly his worst enemy.

Laughter abounds in the mouths of fools.

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.