Fool Man Quotes & Sayings

A fool has more ideas than a wise man can foresee. — Joseph Conrad

Thou man of scruffy looks, thou who heard'st nerfs, Thou fool-born wimpled roughhewn waste waste of flesh! — Ian Doescher

Any man who undertakes to write a play is either a damned fool or a hero, I don't know which. When you write a book, you pull it out of the typewriter and that's that. When you write a play you've got to go on with the producer and the director and the actors and the rehearsals and the ... — Rex Stout

Any man may make a mistake; none but a fool will stick to it. Second thoughts are best as the proverb says.
[Lat., Cujusvis hominis est errare; nullius, nisi insipientis, in errore perseverae. Posteriores enim cogitationes (ut aiunt) sapientiores solent esse.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools. — William Penn

A man, well, he'll walk right into Hell with both eyes open. But even the devil can't fool a dog. — Earl Hamner Jr.

And that wreched creature without hands or feet, who had to be put to bed and fed like a child, that pitiable remnant of a man, whose almost vanished life was nothing more than one scream of pain, cried out in furious indignation: 'What a fool one must be to go and kill oneself!' - 'Joy of Life — Emile Zola

The wise man lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything. — Seneca The Younger

A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling "Thief."
If he is wise he has not been impoverished.
Nor has the fool been enriched.
The thief flatters us by stealing.
We flatter him by complaining. — Ben Hecht

It is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! — Robert Louis Stevenson

A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his position, which after all is only something we wear like clothing. — Seneca The Younger

mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it. Pasquale waited until the — Jess Walter

Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool — Seneca.

While the fool is enjoying the little he has, I will hunt for more. The way to hunt for more is to utilize your odd moments ... the man who is always killing time is really killing his own chances in life. — Arthur Brisbane

2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own - in this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the 'Thing-in-itself - THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!" - — Friedrich Nietzsche

It's better to live as your own man, than as a fool in someone else's dream. — Martin Landau

Fool! Never wait on a man! Let him wait on himself! — V.C. Andrews

Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he's in love with her. — Agatha Christie

Serving men cleared away the swan, hardly touched. Cersei beckoned for the sweets. "I hope you like blackberry tarts."
"I love all sorts of tarts."
"Oh, I've know that for a long while. Do you know why Varys is so dangerous?"
"Are we playing riddles now? No."
"He doesn't have a cock."
"Neither do you." And don't you just hate that, Cersei?
""Perhaps, I'm dangerous too. You, on the other hand, are as big a fool as every other man. That worm between your legs does half your thinking. — George R R Martin

The wise man knows when to keep silent. Only the fool tells all he knows. — Neil Gaiman

In a world where God does not exist, any reasonable person must see that the propensity toward selfishness should be the most venerated of all human traits. From this it stands to reason that any man, knowing the total expanse of his existence to be finite, who does not devote every moment of his life to acts of pure selfishness, must be seen as nothing more than a fool. — Derek R. Audette

The party lines don't change, that's what makes them a party and you'd be a fool to think that just because there's a black man in there it's not gonna change the real foundation of the system. Especially when you look at his largest contributor to his campaign, AIG, one of the culprits in the economic meltdown itself. — Lupe Fiasco

We must always remember that God is Love. "A fool indeed is he who, living on the banks of the Ganga, seeks to dig a little well for water. A fool indeed is the man who, living near a mine of diamonds, spends his life in searching for beads of glass." God is that mine of diamonds. We are fools indeed to give up God for legends of ghosts or flying hobgoblins. It is a disease, a morbid desire. — Swami Vivekananda

If the majority doesn't laugh at you, beware that you must be saying something wrong. When the majority thinks you are a fool, only then is there some possibility of you being a wise man. — Laozi

Hunger makes a fool of a man. — H.G.Wells

Don't let the devil fool you! Unless he's handsome. — Ljupka Cvetanova

A clever fool and a foolish wise man. — George R R Martin

The same principle leads us to neglect a man of merit that induces us to admire a fool.
[Fr., Du meme fonds dont on neglige un homme de merite l'on sait encore admirer un sot.] — Jean De La Bruyere

A man of power and responsibility nevertheless needs somebody to tell him when he is being a bloody fool. — Terry Pratchett

The man who has never made a fool of himself in love will never be wise in love. — Theodor Reik

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two. — Frank Herbert

A fool is a man who believes glory can be found at the tip of a sword instead of on the tip of his tongue. That is life's cruel trick. — Natalia Jaster

I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter. — Robert A. Heinlein

A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions if he is not even ready to wear a wreathe around his head for them. — G.K. Chesterton

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Communication is the one class no one graduates from. Even the wisest man's words will be misinterpreted by a fool. — Shannon L. Alder

It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man. — William Hazlitt

A wise man can be a fool in love. — Chetan Bhagat

I learned over the years never to correct a fool or he will hate you; correct a wise man, and he will appreciate you. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

... I tell you that loneliness itself is the secret. It's a secret you cannot tell anyone. Why?
Because to confess your loneliness is to confess your failure as a human being. To confess would only cause others to pity and avoid you, afraid that what you have is catching. Your condition is caused by a lack of human relationship, and yet to admit to it only drives your possible rescuers farther away (while attracting cats).
So you attempt to hide your loneliness in public, to behave, in fact, as though you have too many friends already, and thus you hope to attract people who will unwittingly save you. But it never works that way. Your condition is written all over your face, in the hunch of your shoulders, in the hollowness of your laugh. You fool no one.
Believe me in this; I've tried all the tricks of the lonely man. — David Marusek

Burrich the Stablemaster, the man who raised me, once warned me, "When you cut pieces from the truth to avoid sounding like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead." I — Robin Hobb

"Why should I become angry just because another man has made a fool of himself. Do thou resist not evil!" That is what the lovers of God say. Whatever the world does, wherever it goes, has no influence [on them]. — Swami Vivekananda

If you are an ignorant man, you are acting wisely; but if you have had any education, you are behaving like a fool. — Theophrastus

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart. — Benjamin Franklin

It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him. — Helen Rowland

When he saw her, the water lapping on her scales, head down in the bath he had built especially for her, thinking that she would like to wash - not to revert to fish - he had that instant revulsion that some men feel when they understand, perhaps for the first time, that a woman is truly "other." She is not a boy though she is weak like a boy, nor a fool though he has seen her tremble with feeling like a fool. She is not a villain in her capacity to hold a grudge, nor a saint in her flashes of generosity. She is not any of these male qualities. She is a woman. A thing quite different to a man. What he saw was a half fish, but what frightened him to his soul was the being which was a woman. — Philippa Gregory

Lack of wisdom does not make a fool. A fool, in the truest sense, is the man who regards his own misfortunes or those of others as a source of doubt or criticism of the infinite mercy of the Gohonzon.-Josei Toda — Daisaku Ikeda

Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one. — Herman Melville

A man that extols himself is a fool and an idiot — John Calvin

Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others. — Otto Von Bismarck

A fool despises good counsel, but a wise man takes it to heart. — Confucius

Like most trends, at the beginning it's driven by fundamentals, at some point speculation takes over. What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end. — Warren Buffett

The man who feels fear without cause is a fool; but the man is twice a fool who does not feel fear when there is cause. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends; Nature and man can never be fast friends. Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave! — Matthew Arnold

Weep for a dead man, for he left the light behind; But weep over a fool, for he left intelligence behind. — Anonymous

I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher ... You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool ... or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. — C.S. Lewis

I happen to be a kind of monkey. I have a monkeylike curiosity that makes me want to feel, smell, and taste things which arouse my curiosity, then to take them apart. It was born in me. Not everybody is like that, but a scientific researchist should be. Any fool can show me an experiment is useless. I want a man who will try it and get something out of it. — Willis R. Whitney

On ladies' nights they watch frozen-faced while their men embrace and fool about commenting to each other that they are all overgrown boys. Of the love of fellows they know nothing. They cannot love each other in this easy, innocent, spontaneous way because they cannot love themselves. — Germaine Greer

The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own. — Aristotle.

I have given my heart. Her face is - " "Usual complement of bits?" asked the little creature. "Eyes? Nose? Teeth? All the usual?" "Of course." "Well then, you can skip that stuff," said the little hairy man. "We'll take it all as said. So what damn-fool silly thing has this young lady got you a-doin' of? — Neil Gaiman

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. — George Orwell

As a rule, man is a fool. When it's hot, he wants it cool; When its cool, he wants it hot. Always wanting, what is not. — Benjamin Disraeli

It is a fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no God ... Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. — Thomas Paine

(Hadley and Mary in the Garden at Blanchard House)
He laughed, a harsh sound, all sign of humor leaving his eyes. "Don't let any of it fool you, my dear, for even the most tarnished silver can acquire a fine and gleaming polish. And believe me, there is far more tarnish here than an innocent and unschooled eye such as yours can discern."
"Why would you speak so of yourself?" Mary protested.
He reached for a red-gold curl that had escaped her lace cap and coiled it around his !nger. "I would forewarn you, Miss Edwardes that I am a man, and men in general are not to be trusted ... " He held her gaze as he slowly released the ringlet, allowing his fingers to skim her cheek. " ... especially not by pretty young virgins. — Victoria Vane

A daughter,' Rowley scooped up the child and held her high. The baby blinked from sleep and crowed with him. 'Any fool can have a son,' he said. 'It takes a man to conceive a daughter. — Ariana Franklin

Fortune, by being too lavish of her favours on a man, only makes a fool of him. — Publilius Syrus

One fool will deny more truth in half an hour than a wise man can prove in seven years. — Coventry Patmore

Just is not by other men of intelligence that an intelligent an is afraid of being thought a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by boors and 'bounders' that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social value underrated. Three-fourths of the mental ingenuity displayed, of the social falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people whose importance they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at inferiors. — Marcel Proust

I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That's where so many clergymen ... go wrong — George MacDonald Fraser

But for now he was alone and hurt and broken on the ground, the man, gravely wounded. Worse, he knew himself a fool, knew himself a loser, knew himself too late, and defeated, ruined by his own hand, near to death.
It was the end and then this happened. The wound in his chest, red and burning, open like an eye, an ear, a mouth, began to glow.
It glowed and warmed until it embered him. Flowers closest to where he lay started to wilt in the heat of it. But inside the man, the heat changed into something else. The first thing he felt it become was courage and the next thing was desire.
They went through him, but with a roughness he'd never known. Then instead of in pain he was thirsty, but with a thirst he'd never known. The heat and the glow and the thirst combined and melted the man into someone he'd never been.
He heard a noise. It was the roar of water.
Up he got off the ground to go and sort himself out. — Ali Smith

To say nothing of what you lose, lose, lose, are losing, man. You fool, you stupid fool ... You've even been insulated from the responsibility of genuine suffering ... Even the suffering you do endure is largely unnecessary. Actually spurious. It lacks the very basis you require of it for its tragic nature. You deceive yourself. — Malcolm Lowry

Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it. — Blaise Pascal

A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool. — Zhuangzi

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. — Baltasar Gracian

Every fool knows you can't touch the stars, but it doesn't stop a wise man from trying. — Harry Anderson

Killy arched an eyebrow in disbelief. Don't be thinkin' you can deceive this old man. I've been makin' a fool of myself over women since before you were born. — Pamela Clare

If I can fool a bug ... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs. — E.B. White

Any fool can waste, any fool can muddle, but it takes something of a man to save, and the more he saves the more of a man does it make of him. — Rudyard Kipling

I can't take this kind of suspense. Decide now." He untied the ropes around her wrists. "Walk out the door. In a year you'll be free of any entanglements with me. Or stay and be my wife. My real wife. Make your choice."
She looked down at the loosened ropes still wrapped around her, then up at him.
He wore an expression of fierce indifference, but she knew better. This proud man, this noble marquees, had made up his mind he wished to marry her without knowing who she was or what she'd done. She would guess the decision was his first impetuous gesture since the day his mother had disappeared.
Amy couldn't fool herself. For him to go so contrary to his own nature, he must feel an overwhelming emotion for her. — Christina Dodd

The house of a childless person is a void, all directions are void to one who has no relatives, the heart of a fool is also void, but to a poverty stricken man all is void. — Chanakya

The wise man hath his thoughts in his head; the fool, on his tongue. — Ivan Panin

A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible. — William Makepeace Thackeray

The difference between a wise man and a fool is a wise man learns his lessons from other people's mistakes and a fool only learns from his own. — Duane "Dog" Chapman

Good fool, help me to some light and some paper. I tell thee, I am as well in my wits as any man in Illyria. — William Shakespeare

The world runs on from one folly to another; and the man who, solely from regard to the opinion of others, and without any wish or necessity of his own, toils after gold, honour, or any other phantom, is no better than a fool. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I often had no scruples about deceiving nitwits and scoundrels and fools when I found it necessary ... We avenge intelligence when we deceive a fool, and ... deceiving a fool is an exploit worthy of an intelligent man. What has infused my very blood with an unconquerable hatred of the whole tribe of fools from the day of my birth is that I become a fool myself when I am in their company. — Giacomo Casanova

A fool's mind is at the mercy of his tongue and a wise man's tongue is under the control of
his mind. — Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib

Because when you are ready to fight at every moment, you are a coward. Fight is a cover up. You want to prove you're a brave man. The very wanting, the desire to prove, means that you are not. A man who is really wise will never in anyway be searching for opportunities to prove that he is wise. A fool is always in in search to prove he is wise. — Osho

What a strange creature is a laughing fool,
As if a man were created to no use
But only to show his teeth. — John Webster

Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool. — Mark Twain

You don't understand, you fool' says Yegor, looking dreamily up at the sky. 'You've never understood what kind of person I am, nor will you in a million years ... You just think I'm a mad person who has thrown his life away ... Once the free spirit has taken hold of a man, there's no way of getting it out of him. — Anton Chekhov

Only a fool loves war," said Calvar, "or a man who has never seen it. The trouble is that the survivors forget about the horrors and remember only the battle lust. They pass on that memory, and other men hunger for it. — David Gemmell

Hardly a man ever made a fool of himself by keeping his bloody mouth shut. — Jim Butcher

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes. — Robert Frost

Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. — Ayn Rand

The man who remains a fool even in advanced age is really a fool, just as the Indra-Varuna fruit does not become sweet no matter how ripe it might become. — Chanakya

IT IS SO EASY TO GIVE IN
I have been thinking about the man who gives in.
Have you heard about him? In this story
A twenty-eight-foot pine meets a small wind
And the pine bends all the way over to the ground.
I was persuaded," the pine says. "It was convincing."
A mouse visits a cat, and the cat agrees
To drown all her children. "What could I do?"
The cat said. "The mouse needed that."
It's strange. I've heard that some people conspire
In their own ruin. A fool says, "You don't
Deserve to live." The man says, "I'll string this rope
Over that branch, maybe you can find a box."
The Great One with her necklace of skulls says,
I need twenty thousand corpses." "Tell you what,"
The General says, "we have an extra battalion
Over there on the hill. We don't need all these men. — Robert Bly

The lions sing and the hills take flight. The moon by day, and the sun by night. Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool. Let the Lord of Chaos rule.
-chant from a children's game heard in Great Arvalon, the Fourth Age — Robert Jordan

I'm not laughing, and I'm not running. I wont lie either. You're a chilling sight to behold. I've had nightmares of monsters prettier than you." She stepped closer and raised her other hand to thread her fingers through his hair. This time he didn't flinch away. "But you're still you under all this flux nonsense. Only a fool of a woman would run from such an extraordinary man, and I am no fool, Ballard de Sauveterre. — Grace Draven

But she had loved her philosopher so strongly that she had made him believe that her body was aroused and ecstatic. Ibn Rushd had been fooled. Men were easily deceived in such matters because they wanted to believe they had the power to arouse. She wanted to make him believe he pleased her. But the truth was that she could give physical pleasure to a man but not receive it, she could only imagine what such pleasure might be like, she could watch and learn, and offer up to her lover the outward signs of it, while trying to fool herself, as well as him, that yes, she was being pleasured too, which made her an actress, a phony, and a self-deceiving fool. — Salman Rushdie