Clever Fools Quotes & Sayings

When I'm writing a lyric, I totally forget about the music. I'm just looking at the lyric and thinking about it almost as a separate entity. And then I'll go to my keyboard with all the lyrics printed out and try to think of how to make this a complete musical thing. I've got a very basic keyboard with some presets. — Scott Walker

Impatience makes fools of clever men... — R.A. Scotti

While lawyers are arguing about the PATRIOT Act or the America Freedom Act, the point is, the terrorists have moved on, the technologists have moved on, and we, the United States of America, are not taking advantage of the latest and greatest in technology the terrorists are. We need to get smart about it. — Carly Fiorina

Hospitality is a prized virtue of monastic communities. Benedict's rule says: 'All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me."' Brother Alphonsus served as a doorkeeper in the seventeenth century at a Jesuit college in Majorca, Spain. Each time someone knocked at the door he would reply, 'I am coming, Lord!' This practice reminded him to treat each person with as much respect as if it were Jesus himself at the door. — Ken Shigematsu

As 'twas in the times of old 'tis now, The sword is the sceptre, and all must bow. — Friedrich Schiller

A clever slave deserves a clever master, and you lot all look like fools. — George R R Martin

Every spring he vowed to quit teaching school, and every summer he missed his pupils and searched for them on the streets. — Annie Dillard

The greatest fools are ofttimes more clever than the men who laugh at them. — George R R Martin

It was the coldest winter ever! I thought last winter was the coldest winter ever, but I was wrong now wasn't I? You see because I travel all the time. So last winter, I'd be in the midwest, and the blizzard would hit. And then I'd fly home, AND THE BLIZZARD WOULD HIT AGAIN! — Lewis Black

I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence. — Alexis De Tocqueville

We think we're so clever. And yet we're always surprised to find ourselves entrapped or made fools of. — Julie Anne Long

Don't be fooled by clever hands, sir" the Sunlight Man said. He'd be lying with the back of his head on his hands, as he always lay. "Entertainment's all very well, but the world is serious. It's exceedingly amusing, when you think about it: nothing in life is as startling or shocking or mysterious as a good magician's trick. That's what makes stagecraft deadly. Listen closely, friend. You see great marvels performed on the stage - the lady sawed in half, the fat man supported by empty air, the Hindu vanishing with the folding of a cloth - and the subtlest of poisons drifts into your brain: you think the earth dead because the sky is full of spirits, you think the hall drab because the stage is adazzle with dimestore gilt. So King Lear rages, and the audience grows meek, and tomorrow, in the gray of old groceries, the housewife will weep for Cordelia and despair for herself. They weren't fools, those old sages who called all art the Devil's work. It eats the soul. — John Gardner

So many, though reluctant to admit it. Shun clever men, and rather suffer fools. — Ivan Krylov

William was deeply humiliated. I tried to comfort him; I told him that for three days he had been looking for a text in Greek and it was natural in the course of his examination for him to discard all books not in Greek. And he answered that it is certainly human to make mistakes, but there are some human beings who make more than others, and they are called fools, and he was one of them, and he wondered whether it was worth the effort to study in Paris and Oxford if one was then incapable of thinking that manuscripts are also bound in groups, a fact even novices know, except stupid ones like me, and a pair of clowns like the two of us would be a great success at fairs, and that was what we should do instead of trying to solve mysteries, especially when we were up against people far more clever than we. — Umberto Eco

The greatest fools in the universe are men who think they are smarter than women. — Matshona Dhliwayo

And still I look for the men who will dare to be
roses of England
wild roses of England
men who are wild roses of England
with metal thorns, beware!
but still more brave and still more rare
the courage of rosiness in a cabbage world
fragrance of roses in a stale stink of lies
rose-leaves to bewilder the clever fools
and rose-briars to strangle the machine. — D.H. Lawrence

I don't think there is a musician today that hasn't been affected by Elvis' music. His definitive years - 1954-57 - can only be described as rock's cornerstone. He was the original cool. — Brian Setzer

Deprived of the company of fools, a great wit does not seem half so clever. — Francois Alexandre Frederic, Duc De La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Fools lie, clever men stick to the truth. — Michael Scott

By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible. — C.S. Lewis

Passion often makes a madman of the cleverest man, and renders the greatest fools clever. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

JACK.
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.
ALGERNON.
We have.
JACK.
I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?
ALGERNON.
The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.
JACK.
What fools! — Oscar Wilde