Quotes on Folly

There are few enough people with sufficient independence to see the weaknesses and follies of their contemporaries and remain themselves untouched by them.

War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent, maritime passage must be preserved for all nations

Away with that folly that her rights would be detrimental to her character - that if she were recognized as the equal to a man she would cease to be a woman!

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Good Lord! who can account for the fathomless folly of the public?

I have had my dance with Folly, nor do I shirk the blame; I have sipped the so-called Wine of Life and paid the price of shame; But I know that I shall find surcease, the rest my spirit craves, Where the rainbows play in the flying spray, 'Mid the keen salt kiss of the waves.

A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.

What is life but a series of inspired follies.

Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.

There, he had seen every thing to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.

A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life.

O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.

To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.

Given a choice between a folly and a sacrament, one should always choose the folly—because we know a sacrament will not bring us closer to god and there’s always the chance that a folly will.

Oh, thou did'st then ne'er love so heartily. If thou rememb'rest not the slightest folly That ever love did make thee run inot, Thou has not loved. Of if thou has't not sat as I do now, Wearying they hearer in thy mistress's praise, Thou has not loved. Of if thou hast not broke from company Abruptly, as my passion now makes me, Thou has not loved. (Silvius)

What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.

This grieved me heartily ; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.