Folly Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

26 Folly Quotes
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“The most exquisite folly is made of wisdom too fine spun”
Benjamin Franklin Quotes
“The folly of one man is the fortune of another.”
Francis Bacon Quotes
Source: Of Fortune
“Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”
Bible Quotes
Source: Proverbs (ch. XVII, v. 28)
“It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling.”
Bible Quotes
Source: Proverbs (ch. XX, v. 3)
“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.”
Bible Quotes
Source: Proverbs (ch. XXVI, v. 4-5)
“Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.”
Bible Quotes
Source: Proverbs (ch. XXVII, v. 22)
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.”
Bible Quotes
Source: Psalms (ch. XIV, v. 1)
“A fool always finds one still more foolish to admire him. [Fr., Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.]”
Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux Quotes
Source: L'art Poetique (I, 232)
“Fool me no fools.”
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton Quotes
Source: Last Days of Pompeii (bk. III, ch. 6)
“To swallow gudgeons ere they're catch'd. And count their chickens ere they're hatch'd.”
Samuel Butler (1) Quotes
Source: Hudibras (pt. II, canto III, l. 923)
“Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.”
Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron) Quotes
Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (l. 6)
“Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.”
Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron) Quotes
Source: Monody on the Death of the Rt. Hon. R.B. Sheridan (l. 68)
“Folly is wont to have more followers and comrades than discretion. [Sp., Mas acompanados y paniguados debe di tener la locura que la discrecion.]”
Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra) Quotes
Source: Don Quixote (II, 13)
“More knave than fool.”
Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra) Quotes
Source: Don Quixote (pt. I, bk. IV, ch. 2)
“Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.”
George Chapman Quotes
Source: All Fools (act V, sc. 1, l. 292)
“The shortest follies are the best. [Fr., Les plus courtes folies sont les meilleures.]”
Pierre Charron Quotes
Source: Las Sagesse (bk. I, ch. 3)
“Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce.”
Charles Churchill Quotes
Source: Apology (l. 42)
“All places are filled with fools. [Lat., Stultorum plenea sunt omnia.]”
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) Quotes
Source: Epistles (IX, 22)
“To stumble twice against the same stone, is a proverbial disgrace. [Lat., Culpa enim illa, bis ad eundem, vulgari reprehensa proverbio est.]”
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) Quotes
Source: Epistles (X, 20)
“A fool must now and then be right by chance.”
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) Quotes
Source: Epistles (X, 20)
“The solemn fog; significant and budge; A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.”
William Cowper Quotes
Source: Conversation (l. 299)
“Defend me, therefore, common sense, say From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.”
William Cowper Quotes
Source: Task (bk. III, l. 187)
“Exactness is the sublimity of fools. [Fr., L'exactitude est le sublime des sots.]”
William Cowper Quotes
Source: Task (bk. III, l. 187)
“A fool and a wise man are alike both in the starting-place--their birth, and at the post--their death; only they differ in the race of their lives.”
Thomas Fuller Quotes
Source: Holy and Profane States--Of Natural Fools (maxim IV)
“A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may . . . readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.”
Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone Quotes
Source: Time and Place of Homer (introductory)