Quotes & Sayings About Taken For A Fool

It was you,' I said, my words as new and uncertain as a baby's. I was sixteen and in my bedroom, and I shook my head in an attempt to unscramble my thoughts. 'Not the tongue. The fire.'
I shut my eyes, then opened them to make sure I hadn't made this thing up.
[ ... ]
But Christian hadn't taken his eyes off me, and in his expression I saw a slew of emotions: shame, defiance, fury. Fear, but not for himself. For me. I saw my big brother, who carried me off the ledge at Suicide Rock when I froze up. [ ... ] Who thought I was a fool and had no problem telling me so, but who stuck up for me anyway. — Lauren Myracle

Along the (writing) way accidents happen, detours get taken ... But these are not "divine" accidents; I don't believe in those. I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. The more you know about a book, the freer you can be to fool around. The less you know, the tighter you get. — John Irving

Membership of the United Nations gives every member the right to make a fool of himself, and that is a right of which the Soviet Union in this case has taken full advantage. — Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

Thinking of her violation filled him with a kind of rage that had never been visited on him before. Although she was a beautiful woman and strong, his vision kept mixing her up with the vulnerable woman he'd taken on a picnic a couple of months ago. A pretty, young woman who'd just been left by her husband, and was crushed by the betrayal. And what fool would give her up? he thought. It was beyond him. The — Robyn Carr

Upon Mrs Scorton's reappearance, she found herself confronted, not by the fool of his family, but by the Honourable Frederick Standen, a Pink of the Pinks, who knew to a nicety how to blend courtesy with hauteur, and who informed her, with exquisite politeness, that he rather fancied his cousin was tired, and would like to be taken home. One of the uninvited guests, entering the box in Eliza's wake, ventured on a warm sally, found himself being inspected from head to foot through a quizzing-glass, and stammered an apology. — Georgette Heyer

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To hope is to risk pain.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. — William Arthur Ward

Love is not love which alters it when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to the edge of doom.
(Sonnet 116) — William Shakespeare

Dogs also have a higher flicker-fusion rate than humans do: seventy or even eighty cycles per second. This provides an indication why dogs have not taken up a particular foible of persons: our constant gawking at the television screen. Like film, the image on your (non-digital) TV is really a sequence of still shots sent quickly enough to fool our eyes into seeing a continuous stream. But it's not fast enough for dog vision. They see the individual frames and the dark space between them too, as though stroboscopically. — Alexandra Horowitz

But a wife ... "
" ... is an individual who can be interesting when one makes use of her, but one must know how to detach oneself firmly when serious reasons separate one from her."
"That is a harsh statement."
"Not at all ... it is philosophy ... it is the tone of the day, it is the language of reason, one must adopt it or be taken for a fool."
"This supposes some fault in your wife, explain it to me: some natural defect, or a failure to comply, or bad conduct."
"A little of everything ... a little of everything, sir, but let us change the subject, I beg you, and return to that dear Madam: damn me, I don't understand how you can have been in Orleans without amusing yourself with that creature ... but everyone has her. — Marquis De Sade

Heaven help a timid child in a trendy tide He really doesn't know That his heart's being taken for a ride Doing what the world lays down As a steadfast rule And changing when the world says to change Like a steadfast fool Heaven, heaven help me I'm one of the dominoes Chain reaction coming Blow by blow — Mark Heard

He was changed as completely as Amory Blaine could ever be changed. Amory plus Beatrice plus two years in Minneapolis - these had been his ingredients when he entered St. Regis'. But the Minneapolis years were not a thick enough overlay to conceal the "Amory plus Beatrice" from the ferreting eyes of a boarding school, so St. Regis' had very painfully drilled Beatrice out of him and begun to lay down new and more conventional planking on the fundamental Amory. But both St. Regis' and Amory were unconscious of the fact that this fundamental Amory had not in himself changed. Those qualities for which he had suffered: his moodiness, his tendency to pose, his laziness, and his love of playing the fool, were now taken as a matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a star quarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the "St. Regis' Tattler"; it puzzled him to see impressionable small boys imitating the very vanities that had not long ago been contemptible weaknesses. — F Scott Fitzgerald

In many early Christian sources, if a man behaves stupidly it is because he is a fool, while if a woman does so it is seen as typical of her sex. Many readers will wonder why women were so passionate in working for a cause that seems often, on the face of it, to have taken an unnecessarily demeaning tone in speaking of women. — Kate Cooper

Risks
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free. — William Arthur Ward

She had come to him the fool, thinking herself the experienced one. After all, she had nothing to give that another hadn't had, nothing so far as she knew. But he'd taken what hadn't been there; what was his; what was promised. — Shewanda Pugh

Then, slowly, my feet settled to the ground. Before I had taken six steps I sagged like a sail when the wind fades. As I walked back through the town, past sleeping houses and dark inns, my mood swung from elation to doubt in the space of three brief breaths.
I had ruined everything. All the things I had said, things that seemed so clever at the time, were in fact the worst things a fool could say. Even now she was inside, breathing a sigh of relief to finally be rid of me.
But she had smiled. Had laughed.
She hadn't remembered our first meeting on the road from Tarbean. I couldn't have made that much of an impression on her.
'Steal me,' she had said.
I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end. I should have been more cautious. I had talked too much. I had said too little. — Patrick Rothfuss

It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture into Terabithia and turned him into a king. He had thought that was it. Wasn't king the best you could be? Now it occurred to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed for a while and grew strong you had to move on. For hadn't Leslie, even in Terabithia, tried to push back the walls of his mind and make him see beyond to the shining world - huge and terrible and beautiful and very fragile? (Handle with care - everything - even the predators.)
Now it was time for him to move out. She wasn't there, so he must go for both of them. It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.
As for the terrors ahead - for he did not fool himself that they were all behind him - well, you just have to stand up to your fear and not let it squeeze you white. Right, Leslie?
Right. — Katherine Paterson

It was one thing to be fooled, and another thing to be taken for a fool all the time. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

No, Celaena Sardothien certainly did not exist anymore. That woman - the woman he had loved ... Perhaps she'd drowned in the vast, ruthless sea between here and Wendlyn. Perhaps she'd died at the hands of the Valg princes. Or maybe he'd been a fool all this time, a fool to look at the lives she'd taken and blood she'd so irreverently spilled, and not be disgusted. — Sarah J. Maas

In the midst of this utopia, which only your fellow lone voyagers would perceive, you used to transgress society's rules unknowingly, and no one would hold you accountable for it. You would mistakenly enter private residences, go to concerts to which you had not been invited, eat at community banquets where you could only guess the community's identity when they started giving speeches. Had you behaved like this in your own country, you would have been taken for a liar or a fool. But the improbable ways of a foreigner are accepted. Far from your home, you used to taste the pleasure of being mad without being alienated, of being an imbecile without renouncing your intelligence, of being an impostor without culpability. — Edouard Leve

Then I saw the Temptation gleaming like fool's gold on the black water, and my anger returned. The ship was hers too; everything was hers. The room where I slept, the life she had saved . . . had she created it in the first place? And even now, my heart. All hers.
I was not a jealous man - it wouldn't bother me at all if only I had something of my own. So what was mine? The coat I wore? Bought with stolen gold. The money in my pocket? Taken from the harbormaster. I pulled out the handful of tarnished silver; it gleamed dully in the moonlight. I cast the coins into the harbor like dice, like bones. They tumbled into the water and I watched the ripples disappear as though they'd never been. — Heidi Heilig

I didn't choose to be the Angel of Death, blast it!" He practically spat the words. When she blinked, taken aback by his vehemence, he added, "That was some fool's idea of a joke"
She kept staring at him, speechless. A joke? Her brother's death was a joke to someone?
Seeing her reaction, he went on in a low, tortured voice, "After Roger's accident, I wore black to mourn him. Since Roger wasn't my family, Chetwin commented on it, saying that I dressed in black because Death was my constant companion. He pointed out that everyone I touched died
my parents, my best friend ... everyone."
He began to pace the clearing, pain etched in his features. "Chetwin was right, of course. Death was my constant companion. So it was no great surprise when other people started calling me the Angel of Death." His voice grew choked. "I fit the part, after all."
-Gabriel to Virginia — Sabrina Jeffries

I've never taken a lesson in my life, and I can play every instrument there is. I play by ear, but I can fool anybody into thinking I went to some conservatory of music. — Dick Dale

They are all slaves now. Mustang is making them as we speak. But ohhh, she's in an odd mood." He spits out a bone. "Ha! This him then? The Jackal? He looks pale as a Red's ass." He peers closer. "Shit. You nailed him down!" "I think you've taken bigger shits than him, Pax," Sevro adds. "Prime have. More colorful ones too. He's drab as a Brown." "Guard your tongue, fool," the Jackal tells Pax. "It may not always be there." "Neither will your prick if you keep sassin'! Ha! Is it as small as you?" Pax booms. The — Pierce Brown

The Devil answer'd: bray a fool in a morter with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him; if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? murder those who were murder'd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defense before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules. — William Blake

Here's what I like about God: Trees are crooked, mountains are lumpy, a lot of his creatures are funny-looking, and he made it all anyway. He didn't let the aardvark convince him he had no business designing creatures. He didn't make a puffer fish and get discouraged. No, the maker made things - and still does. European film directors often enjoy creative careers, during which their films mature from the manifestos of angry young men to the rueful wisdom of great works by creative masters. Is an afternoon siesta the secret? Is their vita just a little more dolce? We've taken espresso to our American hearts, but we haven't quite taken to the "break" in our coffee breaks. Worried about playing the fool, we forget how to simply play. We try to make our creativity linear and goal oriented. We want our "work" to lead somewhere. We forget that diversions do more than merely divert us. — Julia Cameron

I'm not a fool and I won't be taken for a ride. I will stand up for my self but at the same time I don't presume the worst and I don't see people coming at me with negativity. Until they do. — Michele Bachmann

Carpe diem was the lesson to be learned. It's what I had been trying to teach Ben when I let him run ahead in the woods. Seize the day - be brave - be independent - be thoughtful - don't be scared to make mistakes - keep learning - all of those things, all the time. And somebody had taken him. More fool me. Ruth's — Gilly Macmillan

I've taken lives, and I've taken my own life in my hands and trusted a friend with it. Yes, sir, I'd say that makes me a man."
"Neither makes you a man. The first makes you a killer. The second makes you a fool. Either may get you killed. — Brent Weeks

There are only three people in life you can never fool
pawnbrokers, whores, and your mother. Since your mother's dead, I've taken her place. Hence, I'm bullshit-proof. — Scott Lynch

I'd not taken you for a fool. Silent yes, but a fool, no. — Erika Swyler

Some one may say, are you not ashamed to be so taken in like a fool? Yes, I should be ashamed, if it had been an open enemy who had so deceived me. But, to my mind, when friend cheats friend, a deeper stain attaches to the perpetrator than to the victim of deceit. — Xenophon

Polly was a writer of many deadlines. There were the ignorable deadlines, the not-to-be-taken-too-seriously deadlines: the deadlines-before-the-deadlines deadlines, and finally, the no-kidding-around deadlines. She set these various dates, she'd told him, to fool herself. — Martha Grimes

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

I did not want to be taken for a fool-the typical French reason for performing the worst of deeds without remorse. — Jules Amedee Barbey D'Aurevilly