You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but now, as yet, intelligent enough.

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

François-René de Chateaubriand, a french writer and politician, who lived from 1768 - 1848, and who have a type of steak named after him.

Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly.

Horace

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

Anatole France (Pen name of Jacques Anatole François Thibault)

Beauty and folly are old companions.

Benjamin Franklin

'Quite by chance I passed the house three days later on my way to a book binder in Clipstone Street. Do you know the neighbourhood, Mis Lamb? It is not antique, but it is interesting. I had as yet no real intention of visiting her, but I must admit that I had been a good deal intrigued by her. I glanced into the ground floor window and, on a long table, what did I see but heaps of papers and rolls of manuscripts! There were files and boxes on the table, also, together with other documents that had been tied with string or tape. So she had been speaking no less than the truth about her husbands papers. I did not hesitate, but on an instinct climbed the steps and rang the bell; to my suprise, she answered the door herself. ''I hoped that you would come, Mr Ireland. I have been waiting for you.''
She took me into the ground-floor room that had the papers. I could see a long and narrow garden at the back, where there was one of those follies in the form of a rock pool. They have become quite a fashion.'

'The Lambs of London - A NOVEL' by Peter Acrkroyd
Found by Sarah, and posted under Shakespeare quote. Thank you!

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
Winston Churchill

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.
Lord Chesterfield

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.
Miguel de Cervantes














Miguel de Cervantes is a spanish author, writer of Don Quixote. Below are two images of the cover of one edition, illustrated by Gustave Dore. One example above.

Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.
Richard Cecil

A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.
Thomas Carlyle

I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler.
Wilhelm Canaris

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.
Lord Byron

The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
William Blake

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
Winston Churchill














View of the interior of the Studio at Chartwell. The studio was created in the 1930s and became a favourite refuge for Churchill during those years. Many of his own paintings are hung here.


















Churchill’s desk in the Study at Chartwell. It is covered with items including a bronze cast of his mother’s hand, family photographs and two porcelain busts of Napoleon and Nelson.

Text and explanations from the website for Chartwell, the former home of Churchill in Kent, now run by The National Trust.

When knowledge is limited - it leads to folly... When knowledge exceeds a certain limit, it leads to exploitation.

Abu Bakr

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

Isaac Asimov

To be bowed by grief is folly; Naught is gained by melancholy; Better than the pain of thinking, Is to steep the sense in drinking.

Alcaeus















White-crescent Longtail ( Codatractus alcaeus ) from the North American Butterfly Association.

A good folly is worth what you pay for it.

George Ade