Quotes & Sayings About Follies

We brush aside all scales not our own, as if they were follies or delusions. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Indeed, I have observed one ingredient, somewhat necessary in a man's composition towards happiness, which people of feeling would do well to acquire; a certain respect for the follies of mankind: for there are so many fools whom the opinion of the world entitles to regard, whom accident has placed in heights of which they are unworthy, that he who cannot restrain his contempt or indignation at the sight will be too often quarrelling with the disposal of things to relish that share which is allotted to himself. — Henry MacKenzie

Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation. — Samuel Johnson

I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me. — Charles Dickens

At the battle of Waterloo, men formed squares into which the wounded were brought for medical care. At the height of the battle, in the madness of the cannonading and death, the riderless horses of the cavalry, the caisson horses of the slaughtered gun crews attempted to penetrate the squares to be saved by the humans. And in the First World War, men subjected to unparalleled mayhem were stricken more by the plight of the horses than anything else. There is a special grief for the innocent caught up in mankind's murderous follies. — Thomas McGuane

Man often acquires just so much knowledge as to discover his ignorance, and attains so much experience as to regret his follies, and then dies. — William Benton Clulow

Dancing is, in itself, a very trifling and silly thing: but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform; and then they should be able to do it well. And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well. — Lord Chesterfield

For the rest of my life there are two days that will never again trouble me. The first day is yesterday with all its blunders and tears, follies and defeats. Yesterday has passed away, beyond my control forever. The other day is tomorrow with all its pitfalls and threats, its dangers and mystery. Until the sun rises again I have no stake in tomorrow, for it is still unborn. — Og Mandino

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. — Arthur Schopenhauer

In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach. — Oliver Goldsmith

Christ Jesus has no quarrel with his spouse. She often wanders from him, and grieves his Holy Spirit, but he does not allow her faults to affect his love. He sometimes chides, but it is always in the tenderest manner, with the kindest intentions: it is "my love" even then. There is no remembrance of our follies, he does not cherish ill thoughts of us, but he pardons and loves as well after the offence as before it. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Christ was sent into the world to be a witness against the world; and so are His people sent by Him into the world to be witnesses against the world. Let us witness against its sins, its follies, its inconsistencies, its God-dishonouring ways, and customs; Let us do it with our lips, do and not be ashamed; Let us do it in our hearts, and manifest it in our lives. — Marcus Rainsford

Idyllic follies never last, my little Chauvelin ... They come upon us like the measles ... and are as easily cured. — Emmuska Orczy

What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised; and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies. — Jonathan Swift

If you wish to collect complimentary material for a record of yourself, never appeal to your relations. They may be proud of you as an asset to the family name, but they have a gift for remembering your gawky period privately, the follies and faults you committed and have forgotten. You may have come up in the world with a laurel on your brow, but if you go back home forty years later wearing two laurels on your brow, and a noble expression, they will miss the point. — Corra May Harris

We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen left. — Guy De Maupassant

Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place. — Moliere

Fashion condemns us to many follies, the greatest is to make oneself its slave. — Napoleon Bonaparte

The present generation sees everything clearly, marvels at the errors and laughs at the follies of its forefathers, not seeing that there are streaks of heavenly light in that history, that every letter in it cries aloud to them, that on all sides a pointing finger is turned upon it, upon the present generation. But the present generation laughs and proudly, self-confidently, enters upon a series of fresh errors at which their descendants will laugh again in their turn. — Nikolai Gogol

Quite apart from the fact that we usually pay so dearly for our follies, we should be generous about them, to ourselves and others. Yes, we always pay for them, and sometimes the smallest indiscretions cost as much as the largest. — Irene Nemirovsky

I can easily believe it. Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to. Such varieites of human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing! And it is not merely in its follies, that they are read; for they see it occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation
of all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes. — Jane Austen

O woman! woman! thou shouldest have few sins of thine own to answer for! Thou art the author of such a book of follies in a man that it would need the tears of all the angels to blot the record out. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled. — Charles Mackay

I think comedy and satire are a very important part of democracy, and it's important we are able to laugh at the idiosyncrasies or the follies or vanities of people in power. — Rory Bremner

The follies of mankind; they are like a night without stars. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us. — George Eliot

Do not feel bad because of it. It's impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishment. — Christopher Paolini

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature. — Voltaire

The avoidance of little evils, little sins, little inconsistencies, little weaknesses, little follies, little indiscretions and imprudences, little foibles, little indulgences of self and of the flesh, little acts of indolence or indecision, or slovenliness or cowardice, little equivocations or aberrations from high integrity, little touches of shabbiness or meanness ... little indifferences to the feelings or wishes of others, little outbreaks of temper, or crossness, or selfishness, or vanity - the avoidance of such little things as these goes far to make up at least the negative beauty of a holy life. — Horatius Bonar

The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture. — Ian Hamilton Finlay

America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations. — Napoleon Bonaparte

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. — H.L. Mencken

Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought. — Bernard Baruch

I have been happy ... in believing that ... whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators. — Thomas Jefferson

I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding - certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever. — Jane Austen

All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times. — Voltaire

And others' follies teach us not,
Nor much their wisdom teaches,
And most, of sterling worth, is what
Our own experience preaches. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I felt inadequate to show him the way. I wanted my son to know much laughter and more love, to appreciate the grace of this world and the abiding mystery of it, to know the pleasure of small achievements, of trifles and of follies, to be always aware of the million wonderful little pictures in the big one ... we would have to find our way together. I loved him enough to endure any horror for him and to die that he might be spared. No matter how much you care for another person, however, you can't guarantee him a happy life, not with love, or money, not with sacrifice. You can only do your best - and pray for him. — Dean Koontz

Accounting is a big subject and there are huge forces in play. The entire momentum of existing thinking and existing custom is in a direction that allows terrible follies to happen, and the terrible follies have terrible consequences. — Charlie Munger

The follies of the wise man are known to himself, but hidden from the world. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In the Savage Garden you shine beautifully, my friend. You walk as if it is your garden to do with as you please. And in my wanderings, I always return to you. I always return to see the colours of the garden in your shadow, or reflected in your eyes, perhaps, or to hear of your latest follies and mad obsessions. — Anne Rice

Mike Stanton is our preeminent aficionado and raconteur of Rhode Island's flamboyantly criminal political follies, and The Prince of Providence is the chronicle of a great American rogue, Mayor Buddy Cianci - a paragon of charisma and corruption. — Philip Gourevitch

My dreams are all follies. — Taylor Caldwell

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another? — Thomas Jefferson

And Tragedy should blush as much to stoop To the low mimic follies of a farce, As a grave matron would to dance with girls. — Horace

Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies. — Heinrich Heine

I went into the ministry to use the church to elicit political change according to a soft Marxist vision of wealth distribution and proletarian empowerment. Edrita [his wife] could sense that I was on a long and uncertain path. She was always more conservative than I, but she did share my basic social values and was willing at least to let me test my political follies ... Whenever I read the New Testament after 1950, I was trying to read it entirely without its crucial premises of incarnation and resurrection. That required a lot of circular reasoning for me to establish what the text said. I habitually assumed that truth in religion was finally reducible to economics (with Marx) or psychosexual motives (with Freud) or self assertive power (with Nietzsche). It was truly a self-deceptive time for me, but I had no inkling of its insidious dangers. — Thomas C. Oden

Press on! If Fortune play thee false To-day, tomorrow she'll be true; Whom now she sinks she now exalts, Taking old gifts and granting new, The wisdom of the present hour Makes up the follies past and gone; To weakness, strength succeeds, and power From frailty springs! Press on, press on! — Benjamin

The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register. — Hans F. Sennholz

The strongest symptom of wisdom in man is his being sensible of his own follies. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I am sensible that he who means to do mankind a real service must set down with the determination of putting up, and bearing with all their faults, follies, prejudices and mistakes until he can convince them that he is right. — Thomas Paine

I am skeptical about the idea that we can learn much from history, at least in the sense that knowledge of past follies will prevent us from making similar blunders in the future... And yet it is important to know what happened before, and to try and make sense of it. For if we don't, we cannot understand our own times. — Ian Buruma

Every man's follies are the caricature resemblances of his wisdom. — John Sterling

The literature hardly helps. You remember it only when you are well, healthy, and in a positive state of mind. And you tend to blame your circumstances and people around you for the outcome of the follies you commit. — Girdhar Joshi

None of us is guaranteed against failure or corruption of any kind; witness what's going on in the world in this moment, the follies of human nature and the failures of human nature. — Morris West

For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more
remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words. — J.R.R. Tolkien

It is but one of the many follies of luxury which lead men to believe that plenty now is abundance always and fortune is everlasting. Pure folly. My — Stephen R. Lawhead

You could fill a catalog with all you long for - for him to come back, for a do-over, for a different ending in which not only were you strong and said good-bye but he lived and made a success of his life and decades later you could look back together on your twenties and laugh at all your follies, for his voice on the other end of the phone call, for one more of those Albuquerque nights when it was easy to fall asleep knowing he was just in the next room. — Leigh Stein

The world is a chessboard, Madam, on which we play out our ploys and follies. You are the Queen, of course. Your moves are the strongest. For myself, I claim only to be a knight, advancing in a crooked progress. Do we move ourselves, do you think, or does a great gloved hand place on our squares — Catherine Fisher

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

England, a happy land we know,
Where follies naturally grow,
Where without culture they arise,
And tow'r above the common size. — Charles Churchill

Some follies are caught, like contagious diseases. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

Thus aged men, full loth and slow, The vanities of life forego, And count their youthful follies o'er, Till Memory lends her light no more. — Walter Scott

The folly of all follies is to be love sick for a shadow. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

At fifteen, it [ "Follies"] didn't have any kind of resonance with me, this show about regret and middle age. — Charles Busch

A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland's youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what's left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs. — Michelle Malkin

What is life but a series of inspired follies ... — George Bernard Shaw

what with the follies and an indecent proposal it's been quite a night — Barbra Streisand

If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices. — Anne Bronte

The budget should be balanced not by more taxes, but by reduction of follies. — Herbert Hoover

Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God ... It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Slavery is the parent of ignorance, and ignorance begets a whole brood of follies and vices; and every one of these is inevitably hostile to literary culture. — Hinton Rowan Helper

If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or do not marry, you will regret both; Laugh at the world's follies, you will regret it, weep over them, you will also regret that; laugh at the world's follies or weep over them, you will regret both; whether you laugh at the world's follies or weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it, believe her not, you will also regret that; believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both; whether you believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both. Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will also regret that; hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the sum and substance of all philosophy. — Soren Kierkegaard

All right, Schwartz, tackle my mind now. Go as deep as you want. I was born on Baronn in the Sirius Sector. I lived my life in an atmosphere of anti-Terrestrialism in the formative years, so I can't help what flaws and follies lie at the roots of my subconscious. But look on the surface and tell me if, in my adult years, I have not fought bigotry in myself. Not in others; that would be easy. But in myself, and as hard as I could. — Isaac Asimov

E is betrayed by the cynical sparkle of her eyes, by her sophisticated look. Real ladies do not know the price of things, they like adorable follies; their eyes are like beautiful, hothouse flowers. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture. — Joseph Addison

All the world's follies," he replied, "turn up in publishing houses sooner or later. But the world's follies may also contain flashes of the wisdom of the Most High, so the wise man observes folly with humility." Then — Umberto Eco

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies. — Julian Barnes

Let the sexes mutually forgive each other their follies; or, what is much better, let them combine their talents for their general advantage. — Maria Edgeworth

Strange secrets are let out by Death Who blabs so oft the follies of this world. — Benjamin Franklin

Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all? — Samuel Adams

I'm not sure why I enjoy debunking. Part of it surely is amusement over the follies of true believers, and [it is] partly because attacking bogus science is a painless way to learn good science. You have to know something about relativity theory, for example, to know where opponents of Einstein go wrong ... Another reason for debunking is that bad science contributes to the steady dumbing down of our nation. Crude beliefs get transmitted to political leaders and the result is considerable damage to society. — Martin Gardner

As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man. — Samuel Richardson

I had a son and I breathed for him. When we buried him my sorrow consumed me. Was my grief holy? Was it unique? All our hurts and follies are repeated time and again. Generation after generation live the same mistakes. But we're not like the fire, or the river, or the wind - we're not a single tune, its variations played out forever, a game of numbers until the world dies. — Mark Lawrence

Nineteen twentieths of [mankind is] opaque and unenlightened. Intimacy with most people will make you acquainted with vices and errors and follies enough to make you despise them. — John Adams

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those he didn't commit when he had the opportunity. — Helen Rowland

In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history. — Albert Camus

Many brief follies
that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with a single long stupidity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. — Ambrose Bierce

If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies — Samuel Johnson

Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Stuyvesants and Vanderbilts and Roosevelts and staid, respectable Washington Square. Trinity Church. Mrs. Astor's famous ballroom, the Four Hundred, snobby Ward McAllister, that traitor Edith Wharton, Delmonico's. Zany Zelda and Scott in the Plaza fountain, the Algonquin Round Table, Dottie Parker and her razor tongue and pen, the Follies. Cholly Knickerbocker, 21, Lucky Strike dances at the Stork, El Morocco. The incomparable Hildegarde playing the Persian Room at the Plaza, Cary Grant kneeling at her feet in awe. Fifth Avenue: Henri Bendel, Bergdorf's, Tiffany's. — Melanie Benjamin

I love, I love beauty
and in it I worship my follies,
the ones I found on my own,
and the ones to which I was led — Adonis

Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can. — Jane Austen

You desire to be learned, wealthy, and great, without labor; it is one of the follies still extant in the world. — George Pope Morris

In the later nineteenth century, the tops of skyscrapers often took the shape of domes, surmounted by jaunty gilded lanterns; later came ziggurats, mausoleums, Alexandrian lighthouses, miniature Parthenons. These charming follies contained neither royal corpses nor effigies of gods and goddesses; rather they contained large wooden tanks filled with water. — Brendan Gill

With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings. — Robert Walser

And lash the vice and follies of the age. — Susanna Centlivre