Praise Of Folly Quotes & Sayings

Erasmus dramatizes a well-established political position: that of the fool who claims license to criticize all and sundry without reprisal, since his madness defines him as not fully a person and therefore not a political being with political desires and ambitions. The Praise of Folly, therefore sketches the possibility of a position for the critic of the scene of political rivalry, a position not simply impartial between the rivals but also, by self-definition, off the stage of rivalry altogether. — J.M. Coetzee

The larger the crowd, the more probable that that which it praises is folly, and the more improbable that it is truth; and the most improbable of all that it is any eternal truth. — Soren Kierkegaard

Erasmus's The Praise of Folly. According to a footnote, the argument of the growing heap is: If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin? What if you add another? Finally, you will have to say that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him so. — Gretchen Rubin

SILVIUS: How many actions most ridiculous/Hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy?
CORIN: Into a thousand that I have forgotten.
SILVIUS: O, thou didst then ne'er love so heartily!/If thou remember'st not the slightest folly/That ever love did make thee run into,/Thou hast not loved:/Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,/Wearying thy hearer in thy mistress' praise,/Thou hast not loved ... — William Shakespeare

How I hated myself, thwarted, poisoned and tortured myself, made myself old and ugly. Never again, as I once fondly imagined, will I consider that Siddartha is clever. But one thing I have done well, which pleases me, which I must praise- I have now put an end to that self-detestation, to that foolish empty life. I commend you, Siddartha, that after so many years of folly, you have again a good idea, that you have accomplished something, that you have again heard the bird in your breast sing and followed it. — Hermann Hesse

He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. — Oscar Wilde

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) — William Shakespeare

I do not say, however, that every delusion or wandering of the mind should be called madness. Erasmus of Rotterdam, The Praise of Folly There — Samuel R. Delany

Ardent, intelligent, sweet, sensitive, cultivated, erudite. These are the adjectives of praise in an androgynous world. Those who consider them epithets of shame or folly ought not to be trusted with leadership, for they will be men hot for power and revenge, certain of right and wrong. — Carolyn Heilbrun