See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly.
There can be there ought to be no medium course; a love-affair is either sober earnest or contemptible folly, if not wickedness: to gossip about it is, in the first instance, intrusive, unkind, or dangerous; in the second, simply silly.
Life is hollow without health and freedom. To seek one while ignoring the other is folly.
Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.
Every one knows about the young man who falls in love with the chorus-girl because she can kick his hat off, and his sister's friends can't or won't. But the youth who marries her, expecting that all her departures from convention will be as agile or as delightful to him as that, is still the classic example of folly.
Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.
Thy pride is but the prologue of thy shame; where vain-glory commands, there folly counsels; where pride rides, there shame lackeys.
To overcome the intelligent by folly is contrary to the natural order of things; to overcome the foolish by intelligence is in accord with the natural order. To overcome the intelligent by intelligence, however, is a matter of opportunity.
Children would die of terror if they knew the folly and ignorance of their caretakers.
There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart - they are meant to be borne - they were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
Where consequence ceases, there folly, restlessness and misery begin.
To stumble twice against the same stone is a Proverbsial disgrace.
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
Meddling with another man's folly is always thankless work.
The gayety of life, like the beauty and the moral worth of life, is a saving grace, which to ignore is folly, and to destroy is crime. There is no more than we need; there is barely enough to go round.
America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations.
I prefer silent prudence to loquacious folly.
Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation. . . to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which.
The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.