…when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

William Faulkner

"Brutes find out where their talents lie;
A bear will not attempt to fly,
A foundered horse will oft debate
Before he tries a five barred gate.
A dog by instinct turns aside
Who sees the ditch too deep and wide,
But man we find the only creature
Who, led by folly, combats nature;
Who, when she loudly cries—Forbear!
With obstinacy fixes there;
And where the genius least inclines,
Absurdly bends his whole designs."

Jonathan Swift

That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages. - Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1790

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, capable not only of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting 100 impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations. -Adam Smith (On the new £20 notes)

"Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield!
Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason,
Resplendent daughter of the head divine,
Wise foundress of the system of the world,
Guide of the stars, who are thou then, if thou,
Bound to the tail of folly's uncurb'd steed,
Must, vainly shrieking, with the drunken crowd,
Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss."

Friedrich von Schiller


















'Johann Christoph Friedrich (later: von) Schiller (November 10, 1759 in Marbach, Germany – May 9, 1805), was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and dramatist. During the last several years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang Goethe, with whom he discussed much on issues concerning aesthetics, encouraging Goethe to finish works he left merely as sketches; this thereby gave way to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Die Xenien (The Xenies), a collection of short but harshly satiric poems in which both Schiller and Goethe verbally attacked those persons they perceived to be enemies of their aesthetic agenda.' Wikipedia

Learn to live well, or fairly make your will; you played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill: walk sober off; before a sprightlier age comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage: leave such to trifle with more grace and ease, whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.

Alexander Pope

Even I, who had the tide going out and in before me in the bay, and even watched for the ebbs, the better to get my shellfish -- even I (I say) if I had sat down to think, instead of raging at my fate, must have soon guessed the secret, and got free. It was no wonder the fishers had not understood me. The wonder was rather that they had ever guessed my pitiful illusion, and taken the trouble to come back. I had starved with cold and hunger on that island for close upon one hundred hours. But for the fishers, I might have left my bones there, in pure folly. And even as it was, I had paid for it pretty dear, not only in past sufferings, but in my present case; being clothed like a beggar-man, scarce able to walk, and in great pain of my sore throat.I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first. -Robert Louis Stevenson

















Stevenson, in bed, playing the flageolet. Engraving from a photograph taken in Maderia Cottage, in Vailima, Samoa and published in Scribner's Magazine, May 1896.

Experience, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Childhood, n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary.

Other: CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.
IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.
INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
OPPORTUNITY, n. A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
PLAN, v.t. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.

'If a person were to try stripping the disguises from actors while they play a scene upon stage, showing to the audience their real looks and the faces they were born with, would not such a one spoil the whole play ? And would not the spectators think he deserved to be driven out of the theatre with brickbats, as a drunken disturber ?... Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage ? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor to go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows.'
Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

Erasmus by Holbein.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Samuel Johnson, who wrote the first dictionary.

Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.
Bible, Proverbs 26:4 (NIV)

Yet ah! why should they know their fate,

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies?

Thought would destroy their paradise.

No more; where ignorance is bliss,

'Tis folly to be wise.

Thomas Gray, Poet, "On a Distant Prospect of Eton College" 1742

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.
Horace (65 BC - 8 BC), Epistles

All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.
John Quincy Adams (1767 - 1848)

President of the United States (March 4, 1825 – March 4, 1829).

Leave each one his touch of folly; it helps to lighten life's burden which, if he could see himself as he is, might be too heavy to carry.
John Lancaster Spalding.

It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

Syrus's maxims together in Latin:
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/syrus.html

If you wouldst live long, live well, for folly and wickedness shorten life.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

Also:
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.

Interesting Project on Franklin: http://www.english.udel.edu/lemay/franklin/

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
Herbert Spencer
Philosopher.

Click on image for full size, and to read text, if desired.
From: http://www.thesociologypage.com/

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)

'François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, le Prince de Marcillac (September 15, 1613 – March 17, 1680), was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs, as well as an example of the accomplished 17th-century nobleman. He was born in Paris in the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court oscillated between aiding the nobility and threatening it. Until 1650, he bore the title of Prince de Marcillac.' Wikipedia.

Also by Rochefoucauld:
Many people despise wealth, but few know how to give it away.

Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Paul Valery (1871 - 1945), 1895.

Picture: Paul Valery by himself.

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger.
Thomas H. Huxley. English biologist (1825 - 1895)

He also said:

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion... or you shall learn nothing.

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.

Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting thing he had got.

Josh Billings US Humorist (1818 - 1885)

So long as thou are ignorant be not ashamed to learn. Ignorance is the greatest of all infirmities, and when justified, the chiefest of all follies.
Izaak Walton (1593 - 1683)

Izaak Walton was an English author, who wrote a book called The Compleat Angler.

But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To see me thus transformed to a boy.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), The Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 6

By their own follies they perished, the fools.


Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies.
Homer (800 BC - 700 BC), The Odyssey.

Marble bust of Homer. Roman copy of a lost Hellenistic original of the 2nd c. BC. From Baiae, Italy.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.
George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, Act 2.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon (1737 – 1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament.

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
H. L. Mencken

He also once stated:

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

'Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956), better known as H. L. Mencken, was a twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore" and the "American Nietzsche". He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century.' Wikipedia.

One man's folly is another man's wife.

Helen Rowland

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the oppertunity.

Helen Rowland, A Guide to Men, 1922.

Rowland was an American Journalist who lived from 1876 - 1950.

She also famously said: When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they 'don't understand' one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.

folly
One entry found for folly.
Main Entry: fol·ly
Pronunciation: 'fä-lE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural follies
Etymology: Middle English folie, from Anglo-French, from fol fool
1 : lack of good sense or normal prudence and foresight
2 a : criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct b obsolete : EVIL, WICKEDNESS; especially : lewd behavior
3 : a foolish act or idea
4 : an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking5 : an often extravagant picturesque building erected to suit a fanciful taste

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=folly

Felix the Cat (Feline Follies)

There is only one real rule - true follies are unconscious creations, and the real folly builder will deny that what he or she has created could possibly be a folly. You cannot build one deliberately. Only other people can bestow the title of Folly on your monstrous erection.

Once again : http://www.heritage.co.uk/follies/ffdef.html

If a building makes you stop, and scratch your head, and ask yourself "Why?", then unless it is a seat of government there is a good chance that it is a folly.

Forom http://www.heritage.co.uk/follies/ffdef.html

"The Best European Folly of the 20th Century" - The Folly Fellowship

Of The Forbidden Corner - ' . . . a unique labyrinth of tunnels, chambers, follies and surprises created in a four acre garden in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.'

http://www.yorkshirenet.co.uk/theforbiddencorner/