Folly Quotes - Page 16

• If the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly-nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Pain, Adversity, Successful

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2007). “Studies in Pessimism”, p.6, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheep.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Sheep, Revolution, Ass

  Alexander Hamilton, Donald R. Hickey, Connie D. Clark (2006). “Citizen Hamilton: The Wit and Wisdom of an American Founder”, p.58, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Comedy naturally wears itself out - destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.

  William Hazlitt

  Laughing, Weakness, Comedy

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.180, Delphi Classics

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• Politically, Swift was one of those people who are driven into a sort of perverse Toryism by the follies of the progressive party of the moment.

  George Orwell

  Party, People, Progressive

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism, 1946”

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• The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance

  Jane Austen

  Beautiful, Girl, Sex

  Jane Austen (2009). “Northanger Abbey”, p.69, Wild Jot Press

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• He who does not seek advice is a fool. His folly blinds him to Truth and makes him evil, stubborn, and a danger to his fellow man.

  Khalil Gibran

  Truth, Men, Evil

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• When a man has been guilty of any vice or folly, the best atonement he can make for it is to warn others not to fall into the like.

  Joseph Addison

  Fall, Men, Guilt

  Joseph Addison (1858). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.34

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• A fool can no more see his own folly than he can see his ears.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Ears, Fool, Flattery

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1870). “Miscellanies: Prose and Verse”, p.87

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• And if my present deeds are foolish in thy sight, it may be that a foolish judge arraigns my folly.

  Sophocles

  Sight, Judging, Deeds

  Sophocles (2013). “The Tragedies (Annotated Edition)”, p.156, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Go! you may call it madness, folly; You shall not chase my gloom away! There 's such a charm in melancholy I would not if I could be gay.

  Samuel Rogers

  Gay, May, Madness

  'To - , 1814'

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• Knowledge of those unalterable Relations which Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other...To these we should conform in good Earnest; and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our artificial Regulations.

  Edmund Burke

  Pride, Thinking, Order

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.24, Delphi Classics

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• The captain looked defensive. "You regard our customs as primitive?"Every society to its own tastes, captain. The wisdom of one society would be folly for another. Who is qualified to judge? Only the universe, which passes the judgment of survival on all peoples.

  Walter M. Miller, Jr.

  Judging, Survival, Would Be

  Walter M. Miller Jr (2013). “Dark Benediction”, p.83, Hachette UK

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• A man loses his illusions first, his teeth second, and his follies last.

  Helen Rowland

  Men, Dental Work, Teeth

  Helen Rowland (1909). “Reflections of a Bachelor Girl”

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• Keep alive within you and bring under wise control that courage which makes you long to undertake great works, which others might consider it folly to attempt.

  Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

  Inspirational, Wise, Courage

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• Although it has been said by men of more wit than wisdom, and perhaps more malice than either, that women are naturally incapable of acting prudently, or that they are necessarily determined to folly, I must by no means grant it.

  Mary Astell

  Mean, Men, Acting

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• Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he'd led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity - its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self.

  Tobias Wolff

  Teaching, Pride, Boys

  Tobias Wolff (2004). “Old School”, p.193, Vintage

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• Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.

  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

  Pain, Failure, Adversity

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• Even if the disciples had believed in the resurrection of Jesus, it is doubtful they would have generated any following. So long as the body was interred in the tomb, a Christian movement founded on belief in the resurrection of the dead man would have been an impossible folly.

  William Lane Craig

  Christian, Jesus, Men

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• Magic has power to experience and fathom things which are inaccessible to human reason. For magic is a great secret wisdom, just as reason is a great public folly.

  Paracelsus

  Magic, Secret, Reason

  Paracelsus (1951). “Paracelsus: Selected Writings”

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• Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fate, Exercise, Men

  The Rambler, No 85, January 8, 1751.

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• Training- training is everything; training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us.

  Mark Twain

  Names, Training, Opinion

  Mark Twain (1889). “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, p.143, Createspace Independent Pub

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• I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.

  John Stossel

  Government, Years, Long

  "John Stossel: Not Afraid to Tell the Truth". Ed Sigall, NewsMax, June 3, 2006.

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• There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

  Daniel Dennett

  Way, Polite, Theist

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• Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Men, Discovery, Innovation

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• The easy glamour of the French Riviera in the late 1960s - inspired by Romy Schneider's character in La Piscine - mixed with garden elements. Blueprint, botanical, lattice, Queen Anne's lace and folly prints are paired with cleaner silhouettes and proportions in a fresh palette of green, white and coral.

  Tory Burch

  Queens, Character, Garden

  FaceBook post by Tory Burch from Sep 12, 2013

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