Young And Foolish Quotes & Sayings

Writing, it was like a heavenly balm, it was like the flowing out of deep waters, it was like the lifting of a load from the spirit; it brought with it a sense of relief, of assuagement. One could say things in writing without feeling self-conscious, without feeling shy and ashamed and foolish -- one could even write of the days of young Nelson, smiling a very little as one did so. — Radclyffe Hall

I showed up pretty much at the exact right moment to end up with a lot of work on my plate very quickly, because I was young and foolish, and so I wrote very quickly. — Greg Rucka

She marking them begins a wailing note And sings extemporally a woeful ditty How love makes young men thrall and old men dote How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe, And still the choir of echoes answer so. — William Shakespeare

And you might try to hide or protect yourself, or compare the different states of love,
but you must not grow up, must not act wise
when it comes to love.
You must stay foolish and fall
for every heart will beat in different ways together with yours and love is not meant to be compared, only enjoyed, and suffered, and remembered. — Charlotte Eriksson

Power always impresses the young and foolish. — Darren Shan

Call me not wise unless you call all men wise. A young fruit am I, still clinging to the branch and it was only yesterday that I was a blossom. And call none among you foolish for we are neither wise nor foolish. We are green leaves upon the tree of life and surely life itself if beyond wisdom and surely beyond foolishness. — Kahlil Gibran

When the bald associate had mentioned a sleeping beauty, he was referring to a fairy tale that you have probably heard one thousand times. Like all fairy tales, the story of Sleeping Beauty begins with 'Once upon a time,' and continues with a foolish young princess who makes a witch very angry, and then takes a nap until her boyfriend wakes her up with a kiss and insists on getting married, at which point the story ends with the phrase 'happily ever after.' The story is usually illustrated with fancy drawings of the napping princess, who always looks very glamorous and elegant, with her hair neatly combed and a long silk gown keeping her comfortable as she snores away for years and years. — Lemony Snicket

The extreme intellectual elegance of the proposal to legalize the distribution and consumption of drugs, touted as the solution to so many problems at once (AIDS, crime, overcrowding in the prisons, and even the attractiveness of drugs to foolish young people) should give rise to skepticism. Social problems are not usually like that. Analogies with the Prohibition era, often drawn by those who would legalize drugs, are false and inexact: it is one thing to attempt to ban a substance that has been in customary use for centuries by at least nine-tenths of the adult population, and quite another to retain a ban on substances that are still not in customary use, in an attempt to ensure that they never do become customary. Surely we have already slid down enough slippery slopes in the last thirty years without looking for more such slopes to slide down. — Theodore Dalrymple

After September 11, some critics even tried to lump the antiglobalization protesters in with the terrorists, casting them as irresponsible destabilizers of the world order. But the protesters are the children of McWorld, and their objections are not Jihadic but merely democratic. Their grievances concern not world order but world disorder, and if the young demonstrators are a little foolish in their politics, a little naive in their analysis, and a little short on viable solutions, they understand with a sophistication their leaderes apparently lack that globalization's current architecture breeds anarchy, nihilism, and violence. — Benjamin R. Barber

Could anyone hear her out that window? Inexplicably, in her mind she saw the young man who saved the little girl from the runaway horse. Could he hear the desperation in her voice? Would he be willing to come to her aid and help her escape from the prison that was her life? But that was foolish. No one could help her. She had to save herself. — Melanie Dickerson

Like all fairy tales, the Story of Sleeping Beauty begins with 'Once upon a time,' and continues with a foolish young princess who makes a witch very angry, and then takes a nap until her boyfriend wakes her up with a kiss and insists on getting married, at which point the story ends with the phrase 'happily ever after, — Lemony Snicket

Unfortunately, my army consists of one unreliable criminal, one girl with a
disability, and one incredibly foolish young vampire with a tanning issue. I am not confident. — Rachel Caine

Go badly wrong. Sex, she thought. That is what is going to go wrong here. And she was right. "This woman," Mma Gabane Gabane went on, "this foolish, foolish woman met a young man who worked in the same office. He wasn't an accountant - nothing like that - he was a trainee, Mma Ramotswe, just a trainee. He was eighteen." There was a sharp intake of breath from Mma Phumele, who looked at Mma Ramotswe to gauge her reaction. She would be every bit as shocked as the rest of them, she imagined. And Mma Ramotswe was shocked. — Alexander McCall Smith

Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better - best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it.
— Neil Postman

Even when I was a very young man,
I was looking for the purpose of life;
I was looking for happiness all over the world;
In fame and in glamour,
in wealth and in splendor,
not knowing how foolish it was.
Happiness is not out there.
Happiness is not in wealth or splendor.
Happiness is inside me,
in my mind,
in my thoughts,
It is in my perception of the world. — Debasish Mridha

Whether they be old or young, rich or poor, high or low, wise or foolish, ignorant or learned, every individual is seen to be strongly actuated by a desire to be seen, heard, talked of, approved and respected ... a passion for distinction. — John Adams

There is a time for faith, Bishop, and a time for action. It would be a foolish man who stood on a battlefield and faced an army with a Bible in his hands. We are here to do the bidding of our Lord Almighty, but it is through deeds, as well as piety, that we serve Him. — Robyn Young

Your holiness!" She raised her voice, forcing herself to sound tearful and
supplicatory. "If we are to die, would you let me kiss him one last time?"
She half expected Taka to react to her uncharacteristic behavior, but he didn't
move, didn't look at her. He was kneeling in the frozen dirt beside her, every inch of him alert, and she was probably the least of his concerns.
"You want to kiss the man who tried to kill you? You are a very foolish young
woman," the Shirosama said. "Go ahead."
Taka turned to her, his eyes dark and unreadable, waiting. She reached up, put her mouth against his and whispered, "I have a knife that's fallen down the front of my shirt, you son of a bitch. See if you can get it." The feel of his lips against hers was agony. The sickness deep inside her was that she wanted to kiss him anyway, no matter what he'd done. — Anne Stuart

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: 'Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don't you realize that?' They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds. — Charles Bukowski

Expect the worst and you can't be disappointed. Optimism is the luxury of the young, the foolish and the dullard. — Luke Scull

Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young - so have patience with it! — Friedrich Nietzsche

I turned my eyes away from the young warrior, he pounced on me, exactly as I'd known he would. A second knife was in his hand and he swiped it up toward me. I dodged aside, kicked out his knee, and smashed his face into the wooden table before locking his elbow at the joint until he released the blade. "Are you satisfied now?" the chief asked the young man. "Your behavior was rash and stupid. A superior warrior handled you as if you were a baby. You will apologize, and then you will leave my sight until I summon you for whatever punishment I deem necessary." Chief Blacktail looked up at me. "You may release my son." Well, that was a shock, but I did as I was asked and moved away just enough to ensure that any further ideas of retribution would require him to step toward me. I really hoped he wasn't that foolish. Was I that stupid when I was young? Probably. — Steve McHugh

He was angry with himself for being young and the prey of restless foolish impulses, angry also with the change of fortune which was reshaping the world about him into a vision of squalor and insincerity. Yet his anger lent nothing to the vision. — James Joyce

I have spent considerable of my leisure time in this past year in the improvement of my mind but I find that much of it has been spent extremely foolish and that walking in the pasture at dusk with virtuous, amiable and genteel young ladies I experience none but swineish passions. I commenced to read Russell's Modern Europe sometime last summer. — John Cheever

Marriage means handing over yourself, your body, your future, your keeping to the one whom you dearly love, although this person may, in many ways, remain a stranger. This tremendous act of faith is something that can unlock in each lover powers of compassion, generosity, joy, passion, fidelity and hope that no one guessed was even there. That is why the confidence of young lovers is not foolish or arrogant, but an expression of a basic fact in human experience that the greatest of human gifts are set to work only when people are prepared to risk everything and first you risk it before God. — Ravi Zacharias

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher. — Mark Twain

Well, my father [Kingsley Amis] was a writer and it seemed natural to start writing in my late teens. I think it was good that I began when I was young and bold and foolish, otherwise I'd have become too self-conscious and aware of the weight of not having written anything yet. — Martin Amis

How naive and foolish the young are to imagine that they understand the loneliness of great age, the outliving of your contemporaries, anyone to whom your century of memory might make any sense. — Bill Holm

Sitting in Grandmother's old wicker chair and littering my porch with her foolish young life. — Wallace Stegner

As a young boy, I did a lot of foolish things. I made a lot of mistakes. And you live and learn. — Tony Bennett

She touched him, placing her hand over his curled fingers, straightening them so that they were palm to palm, then she interlaced her fingers with his. Her fingertips were icy. A silent, dangerous thrill coursed through him. He wanted to pull her atop him and show her what awaited a foolish young woman who slipped into a man's bedroom in the dead of the night after having devoured him all evening with those dark, intense eyes of hers, setting his blood to simmer over three long hours. — Sherry Thomas

[Terrorism] is formed of certain fundamental problems, [including] ignorance, poverty, and fear of others. Some people take advantage of the young and foolish. They are manipulated, abused, and even drugged to such an extent that they can be used as murderers on the pretext of some crazy ideals or goals. — Fethullah Gulen

Rabbits are a foolish people. They do not fight except with their own kind, nor use their paws except for feet, and appear to have no reason for existence but to furnish meals for meat-eaters. In flight they seem to rebound from the earth of their own elasticity, but keep a sober pace going to the spring. It is the young watercress that tempts them and the pleasures of society, for they seldom drink. — Mary Hunter Austin

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuffed with the stuff that is course, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine, one of the nation, of many nations, the smallest the same and the the largest — Walt Whitman

I've met gibbering horrors from other universes, been psychically entangled with a serial killer fish goddess, stalked by zombies, imprisoned by a megalomaniac billionaire, and I've even survived the attention of the Auditors (when I was young, foolish, and didn't know any better). But I've never lost a classified file before, and I don't ever want there to be a first time. I force myself to sit down — Charles Stross

To describe love-making is immoral and immodest; you know it is. To describe it as it really is, or would appear to you and me as lookers-on, would be to describe the most dreary farce, to chronicle the most tautological twaddle. To take note of sighs, hand-squeezes, looks at the moon, and so forth
does this business become our dignity as historians? Come away from those foolish young people
they don't want us; and dreary as their farce is, and tautological as their twaddle, you may be sure it amuses them, and that they are happy enough without us. — William Makepeace Thackeray

A normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is "weak," "sinful" and anxious for a "good time." Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life. — George Orwell

All I can say is that it's amazing what you can accomplish when you're young and foolish. — Robert Plant

Her gaze met his, her green eyes glazed and filled with shadows. "I-Iain?"
Iain understood those shadows only too well. She was in shock. She had witnessed the full horror of war. Worse, she had killed a man. Like a young soldier after his first battle, she was struggling to cope. 'Twas an anguish no woman should have to bear.
His rage broke like the tide against the shore, and before he could think, he pulled her hard against him, held her, stroked her hair. "You foolish, brave woman! Why do you no' obey me?"
"What the bloody hell is he doin'?" Connor asked from somewhere behind them.
Morgan answered, "I think he's punishin' her."
"If he tries this on the men, they'll mutiny. — Pamela Clare

Die young, stay pretty. Blondie, right? We think of it as a modern phenomenon, the whole youth thing, but really, consider all those great portraits, some of them centuries old. Those goddesses of Botticelli and Rubens, Goya's Maja, Madame X. Consider Manet's Olympia, which shocked at the time, he having painted his mistress with the same voluptuous adulation generally reserved for the aristocratic good girls who posed for depictions of goddesses. Hardly anyone knows anymore, and no one cares, that Olympia was Manet's whore; although there's every reason to imagine that, in life, she was foolish and vulgar and not entirely hygienic (Paris in the 1860s being what it was). She's immortal now, she's a great historic beauty, having been scrubbed clean by the attention of a great artist. And okay, we can't help but notice that Manet did not choose to paint her twenty years later, when time had started doing its work. The world has always worshipped nascence. Goddamn the world. — Michael Cunningham

I have my good days and my bad days, but I don't have as much energy as I used to back when I was young and foolish and didn't count the cost - and it takes a lot - to write. — Anne McCaffrey

Isn't it funny how far we will go to be with someone we think we love. A grown man will behave like a young boy, a young boy will do everything he can to appear like a grown man. We'll risk our reputations, sacrifice our worldly possessions, defy our parents, even our religious beliefs. We'll do illogical and foolish things, things that are impractical, wasteful, just for a moment of what we think is ecstasy on earth. — V.C. Andrews

All of man's work is a bloody business. That fact, today, is considered foolish, affairs are finished cleverly with words alone, and jobs that require effort are avoided. I would like young men to have some understanding of this. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. — George Orwell

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears. — W.B.Yeats

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mrs Woodburn was not an enthusiastic young wife, but knew very well that marriage had its drawbacks, and had come to an age at which she could appreciate the comfort of having her own way without any of the bother. She gave a furtive glance after Lucilla, and could not but acknowledge to herself that it would be very foolish of Miss Marjoribanks to marry, and forfeit all her advantages, and take somebody else's anxieties upon her shoulders, and never have any money except what she asked from her husband. — Mrs. Oliphant

A tree, young or old, if admired, remains a definite vision, and when after long absence it is visited again, the meeting place is approached with feelings of pleasure and curiosity as to how one's friend had fared, even with thoughts as to what changes may come to tree or visitor since first they met; this may seem like a foolish sentiment - perhaps it is. But, after all, sentiment is mingled with most that's best in life. — Charles Eley

Life is short, Isobeli. If we gave time to everything sooner or later we'd run out of it. We only have now. And we would be foolish to not seize it while we have it. So, why would it matter if I love him today or five years from now? — Nadege Richards

You see, when you're young and foolish it doesn't matter where you may be, you always think that you'll be happier somewhere else. — Felix Salten

For he who is a corrupter of the laws is more than likely to be a corrupter of the young and foolish portion of mankind. — Plato

Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rose sighed softly, in a way that seemed to signal a close to the conversation. "I love him, Mamma."
Adeline closed her eyes. Youth! What chance had the most reasonable arguments against the arrogant power of those three words? That her daughter, her precious prize, should utter them so easily, and about such a one as he!
"And he loves me, Mamma, he told me so."
Adeline's heart tightened with fear. Darling girl, blinded by foolish thoughts of love. How to tell her that the hearts of men were not so easily won. If won, rarely kept.
"You'll see," Rose said. "I shall live happily ever after. — Kate Morton

Gilbert: How Clark Gable turn every women's head so? Foolish young English girls would see a movie star in every GI with the same Yankee-doodle voice. Glamour in US privates named Jed, Buck or Chip, with their easy-come-by-gifts and Uncle Sam sweet-talk. Dreamboats in hooligans from Delaware or Arizona with fingernails that still carried soil from home, and eyes that crossed with any attempt at reading. Heart-throbs from men like those in the tea-shop, who dated their very close relatives and knew cattle as their mental equal. — Andrea Levy

But here's the thing Ona. Howard wrote that song for you.' Quinn had never been more sure of anything. 'I think he wrote all his songs for you, Ona, for young and lovely you.'
'Now you're talking foolish.'
'He wrote them for you, and you refused them because he didn't know how to give them to you.' How could he, living his shadow of a life, floundering in the sludge of grief and failure?
'Have you been drinking?'
'Listen to me,' he said. 'You 're the glittering girl with the cherry-wood hair. You're the angel's breath and sunlight.'
'Oh, for heaven's sake.' She sat up crossly, her tufted hair seeming to quiver. 'Quinn Porter,' she said, 'I never took you for a romantic.'
'Howard Stanhope loved you,' he declared. 'I thought you should know.'
'Well, all right.'
'I thought you should know, Ona.'
'Thank you.'
'People should know these things — Monica Wood

It turned out to be a young Dasypus novemcinctus, a nine-banded armadillo, about the size of a small loaf of bread. Although they were becoming more common in Texas, I'd never seen one up close before. Anatomically speaking, it resembled the unhappy melding of an anteater (the face), a mule (the ears), and a tortoise (the carapace). I thought it overall an unlucky creature in the looks department, but Granddaddy once said that to apply a human definition of beauty to an animal that had managed to thrive for millions of years was both unscientific and foolish. — Jacqueline Kelly

We do not now stand in the middle; in every aspect of our life we have, deliberately or by the 'conditioning' of birth, education or environment, allowed ourselves to stand on one bank of the river of life, with some intolerance of those who were foolish enough to choose or be led to stand on the other. Thus we are male or female, old or young, of the East of West. By temperament we are introvert or extrovert, leaders of followers, all for action or striving rather to be. It surely follows that we should be more tolerant of the other fellow, equally right/wrong, and be less swift to judge him with our ignorant, lop-sided view and definite disapproval. In any event, do we have to express an opinion, presume to judge? — Christmas Humphreys

She didn't want to think about how wrong this was or how foolish it was to give herself to a known seducer. Because tonight Oliver wasn't that man. Not to her. He was the boy who'd cried over his dead mother, the young man who'd lost himself in drink and women to forget the past, the marquess who'd vowed not to marry for money. He was the man to be her lover. — Sabrina Jeffries

Now, he thought, since all these most easily perishing things have slipped from me again, now I'm standing here under the sun again just as I have been standing here a little child, nothing is mine, I have no abilities, there is nothing I could bring about, I have learned nothing. How wondrous is this! Now, that I'm no longer young, that my hair is already half gray, that my strength is fading, now I'm starting again at the beginning and as a child! Again, he had to smile. Yes, his fate had been strange! Things were going downhill with him, and now he was again facing the world void and naked and stupid. But he could not feel sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about himself, to laugh about this strange, foolish world. — Hermann Hesse

There were worse things than being young and foolish. — Cathie Pelletier

Our young people, raised under the old rules of courtesy, never indulged in the present habit of talking incessantly and all at the same time. To do so would have been not only impolite, but foolish; for poise, so much admired as a social grace, could not be accompanied by restlessness. Pauses were acknowledged gracefully and did not cause lack of ease or embarrassment. — Kent Nerburn

It is foolish to expect a young man to follow your advice and to ignore your example. — Don Meyer

I don't ask for a miracle," Helmar resumed, "but I do need speed, boldness, and sagacity." He was in the red leather chair beyond the end of Wolfe's desk, with his briefcase on the little table at his elbow. His voice was a raspy oratorical baritone, hard and bony like him. He was going on. "And discretion - that is essential. You have it, I know. As for me, I am a senior partner in a law firm of the highest repute, with offices at Forty Wall Street. A young woman for whom I am responsible has disappeared, and there is reason to fear that she is doing something foolish and may even be in jeopardy. She must be found as quickly as possible. — Rex Stout

Stay hungry, stay young, stay foolish, stay curious, and above all, stay humble because just when you think you got all the answers, is the moment when some bitter twist of fate in the universe will remind you that you very much don't. — Tom Hiddleston

On the waves of the brook she dances by, The light, the lovely dragon-fly; She dances here, she dances there, The shimmering, glimmering flutterer fair. And many a foolish young beetle's impressed By the blue gauze gown in which she is dressed; They admire the enamel that decks her bright, And her elegant waist so slim and slight ... — Heinrich Heine

There is something powerfully beguiling about the excited eyes of a young woman. They can pull all manner of nonsense out of a foolish young man, and I was no exception to this rule. — Patrick Rothfuss

But it is very foolish to ask questions about any young ladies - about any three sisters just grown up; for one knows, without being told, exactly what they are - all very accomplished and pleasing, and one very pretty. There is a beauty in every family. - It is a regular thing — Jane Austen

Youthful dreams are precious things. They ought not to be dashed as foolish and unrealistic just because they are young dreams. Innocence ought not to be destroyed from any callous conviction that a realistic sort of cynicism is better. — Mary Balogh

To be conservative in politics is to take one's bearings not from the latest bright idea about how to make a better world, but by looking carefully at what the past reveals both about the kind of people we are and the problems that concern us. As we get older, we often become conservative in our habits, in our family practices, and in our recognition of the richness of our civilization, but this evolution of our character into a set of habits in no way blocks adventurousness. The old no less than the young may be found starting new enterprises, sailing around the world, and solving arcane academic questions. But it is in the ordinary business of life that we find our excitement, not in foolish collective dreams of political perfection. — Kenneth Minogue

People, you see ... are ruthless and foolish. When they're young, in order to have money and power, they give up everything like health and youth. And when they get sick, become old, and have all the money and power ... in order to find their health and youth again, they spend all of the wealth they've wasted so much energy and time to accumulate. — Jae Hee

Is equally young and foolish in the wide lens of history, and the arrogant denial of this is what unraveled the world. — Isaac Marion

Summer is a Latvian chicken. We make foolish choices. We think we're young again. We run with outstretched arms toward an object of love and it pecks us and pecks us until we're standing there snot-nosed and teary in the middle of Astor Place and the sun sets fire to our Penguin shirts and all that is left to do is go to our air-conditioned homes and ponder the cruelty of our finest season. — Gary Shteyngart

You are nothing like Christine!" he said, in my face. "She was a responsibility, a mistake I made when young and foolish, and from whom I came to believe I would never be free!"
"Then what am I?" I challenged, staring up into blazing sapphire eyes.
"A joy. — Karen Chance

The causes of his embitterment were many, remote and near. He was angry with himself for being young and the prey of restless foolish impulses, angry also with the change of fortune which was reshaping the world about him into a vision of squalor and insincerity. Yet his anger lent nothing to the vision. He chronicled with patience what he saw, detaching himself from it and tasting its mortifying flavour in secret. — James Joyce

The future is shaped by young people foolish enough to believe they can topple a mountain. And yet, when we stand among the rubble, we wonder why no one tried sooner. — Mitch Rowland

It's hard to imagine you and Daddy as ever being young and foolish. I figured you just appeared one day, fully grown and knowing all the answers, she teased. — Sharon M. Draper

You are the one who wanted a happy ending, my dear. So you tell me, how does the story end?"
Tears slipped from my face, and he wiped them away with his thumbs.
"The foolish young man lets the beautiful maiden go."
"Yes." His voice was clotted thick with unshed emotion. "He lets her go. — S. Jae-Jones

Please Lady ... Do not speak of it. I was young and foolish."
"You most certainly were."
"You are cruel, Evanna. — Darren Shan

Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life. — Jane Hirshfield

Because,' Cormery went on, 'when I was very young, very foolish, and very much alone ... you paid attention to me and, without seeming to, you opened for me the door to everything I love in the world. — Albert Camus