Simpletons Quotes

• The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Funny, Character, Play

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1840). “The life and exploits of Don Quixote de la Mancha: In four volumes”, p.27

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• In human character, simplicity doesn't exist except among simpletons.

  Tennessee Williams

  Character, Simplicity, Humans

  Tennessee Williams, John S. Bak (2009). “New Selected Essays: Where I Live”, p.131, New Directions Publishing

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• The world is so full of simpletons and madmen, that one need not seek them in a madhouse.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Stupidity, Needs, World

  Conversations with Goethe Johann Peter Eckermann 17 March (1830).

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• For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

  Honore de Balzac

  Passion, Giving, Village Idiots

  "'Les Célibataires' ('A Bachelor's Establishment')". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1842.

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• A coxcomb is one whom simpletons believe to be a man of merit.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Believe, Ignorance, Men

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• Any simpleton can speak with confidence. Sometimes the greatest fools have the most bravado.

  Brandon Mull

  Fool, Sometimes, Speak

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• The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.

  Marquis de Sade

  Men, Laughing, Enemy

  marquis de Sade, Richard Seaver (1999). “Letters from Prison”, p.327, Arcade Publishing

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• The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

  Mark Twain

  Self, Media, America

  Mark Twain (2000). “Mark Twain: Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims and Other Speeches”, Cooper Square Pub

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• The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Character, Simple, Men

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• You've a right to believe that we're governed by Nature and the hidden Force within her. You can think that the gods, including my Melitele, are merely a personification of this power invented for simpletons so they can understand it better, accept its existence. According to you, that power is blind. But for me, Geralt, faith allows you to expect what my goddess personifies from nature: order, law, goodness. And hope.

  Andrzej Sapkowski

  Believe, Thinking, Order

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• There are a great many simpletons who know themselves to be so, and who make a very cunning use of their own simplicity.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Stupidity, Simplicity, Use

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• A brain you can convince, a simpleton you have to persuade.

  Curt Goetz

  Ignorance, Stupidity, Brain

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• A fool is one whom simpletons believe to be a man on merit.
  [Fr., Un fat celui que les sots croient un homme de merite.]

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Believe, Men, Fool

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• He was endowed with the extraordinary powers of endurance characteristic of madmen and simpletons.

  Vasily Grossman

  Endurance, Characteristics, Madmen

  Vasily Grossman (2011). “Life And Fate (Vintage Classic Russians Series)”, p.11, Random House

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• These possessions of a simpleton being the three I choose and cherish: to care, to be fair, to be humble.

  Laozi

  Humble, Pride, Three

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• How wrong are those simpletons, of whom the world is full, who look more at... color than at the figures which show spirit and movement.

  Michelangelo

  Color, Looks, Movement

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• My father was a simple man; my mother was a simple woman; you see the result standing in front of you, a simpleton.

  Chic Murray

  Funny, Mother, Father

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• We have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture, in a Phidias or a Mozart time. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves about it, we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation, and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant.

  Oswald Spengler

  Lying, Heart, Winter

  Oswald Spengler (1961). “Form and actuality”

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• Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Time, Doe, Village

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Carl Wildman (1953). “Zorba the Greek”, p.97, Simon and Schuster

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• It's a foolish culture that entrusts its food supply to simpletons.

  Joel Salatin

  Culture, Foolish, Food Supply

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• The revolutionary simpleton is everywhere.

  Jose Lezama Lima

  Revolutionary

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• The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass. 

  R.K. Narayan

  Intelligent, Men, Differences

  R. K. Narayan (1988). “A Writer's Nightmare: Selected Essays, 1958-1988”, p.87, Penguin Books India

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• I am a simpleton at heart. In my personal life, I don't wear makeup.

  Bipasha Basu

  Heart, Makeup, Personal Life

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• It's really a trade-off: you're always having to decide whether you're going to say the more ambitious thing, and lose a little clarity - or are you going to say something really clearly, and sacrifice a little nuance? Get too obscure, and you sound like a pretentious asshole; go overboard with the clarity, and you sound like you're talking down to your audience, or like you yourself are a reductive simpleton.

  Elif Batuman

  Sacrifice, Talking, Ambitious

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Real, Book

  Ray Bradbury (1990). “Fahrenheit 451: Curriculum Unit”

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