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

Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.

The Bhagavad Gita

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

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

Joseph Addison



Image and explanitory notes from Edinburgh University Library website:

Addison, Joseph. The Christian Poet : a miscellany of divine poems, all written by the late Mr Secretary Addison ... 1728.

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) was an eminent writer and politician of his time.

In short, the buildings which have become known as follies do nothing more than reflect human nature and taste and, before we judge the motives of their builders, we might be well advised to examin ethe fancies and conceits which lurk within our own minds and personalities.

Stuart Barton
Monumental Follies.

Few follies are as absolutely useless as their strict definition requires.

Of folly buildings
Eccentric Britain, published by Bradt.

A folly is in the eye of the beholder.

Follies, Grottoes and Garden Buildings, by Gwyn Headley and Wym Meulenkamp.

No person is an entirely isolated being; it is impossible for a person to do anything seriously or permanently harmful to himself without the mischief reaching at least to his nearest connections, and often far beyond them. If he injures his property, he does harm to those who directly or indirectly derived support from it, and usually diminishes, by a greater or lesser amount, the general resources of the community. If he deteriorates his bodily or mental facilities, he not only brings evil upon all who depended on him for any portion of their happiness, but disqualifies himself from rendering the services which he owes to his fellow creatures generally, perhaps becomes becomes a burden on their affection or benevolence; and if such conduct were very frequent hardly any offence that is committed would detract more then general sum of good. Finally, if by his vices or follies a person does not direct harm at others, he is nevertheless (it may be said) injurious by his example, and ought to be compelled to control himself for the sake of those whom the sight or knowledge of his conduct might corrupt or mislead.

The Authority of Society and the Individual, On liberty.
John Stuart Mill.



John Stuart Mill T-shirt available from northernsun.com (Products for progressives since 1979).

In his book, The Four Men A Farrago, Hilaire Belloc's character 'Myself', who represents his solemnity, describes the visit of an a East Sussex eccentric to Westminster to his two companions Grizzlebeard (who represents his irony) and The Sailor (his optimism):

'Well, then, when he had come to Westminster, very soon there was a day in which the Big-wigs would have a debate, all empty and worthless, upon Hot Air, or the value of nothingness; and the man who took most money there out of the taxes, and his first cousin who sat opposite and to whom he had promised the next wad of public wealth, and his brother-in-law and his parasite and all the rest of the thieves had begun their pompous folly, when great Fuller arose in his place, full of the South, and said that he had not come to the commons house to talk any such balderdash, or to hear it, but contrariwise proposed, then and there to give them a Eulogy upon the County of Sussex, from which he had come and which was the captain ground and head county of the whole world.'

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Proverbs of Heaven and Hell.
William Blake

When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy,
What art can wash he guilt away?

The Vicar of Wakefield.

Oliver Goldsmith 1728 - 1774.

When a lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Cross) 1819-1880.

Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh were we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Alexander Pope

If thou remember'st not the slightest folly,
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.

As you like it, Shakespeare.

Portrait by John Faed, 1819-1902.

Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem:
Dulce est desipere in loco.

Mingle some brief folly with your wisdom.
To forget it in due place is sweet.

Horace 65 - 8 B.C.

His foe was folly and his weapon wit.

(Inscription on tablet to Sir W S Gilbert)

Anthony Hope, also known as Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins.

Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall.

Matthew Arnold 1822-1888.

The picture placed the busts between
Adds to the thought much strength;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly ’s at full length.

On Beau Nash’s Picture at full length between the Busts of Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Pope. 1

Note 1. This epigram is generally ascribed to Chesterfield.

O heart! O Heart! if she'd but turn her head,

You'd know the folly of being comforted.

W. B. Yeats

Painting of W. B. Yeats by his brother J. B. Yeats.

He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.

As you like it, Shakespeare.

And the feather pate of folly
Bears the falling of the sky.

A. E. Housman

Hence, vain deluding joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred.

John Milton, Il Penseroso.

Marginal drawing of Folly by Hans Holbein in the first edition of Erasmus' Praise of Folly, 1515.

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.

The Merchant of Venice [II. vi. 36]
Shakespeare.

In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stage-coach.

She stoops to Conquer, 1. Oliver Goldsmith 1728-1774.

Goldsmith also wrote 'The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes' a children's story; source of the phrase 'goody two shoes'.

To--

Oh author of my being!-far more dear

To me than light, than nourishment, or rest,

Hygieia's blessings, Rapture's burning tear,

Or the life blood that mantles in my breast!

If in my heart the love of Virtue glows,

'T was planted there by an unerring rule;

From thy example the pure flame arose,

Thy life, my precept-thy good works, my school.

Could my weak pow'rs thy numerous virtues trace,

By filial love each fear should repress'd;

The blush of Incapacity I'd chance,

And stand, recorder of thy wealth, confess'd:

But since my niggard stars that gift refuse,

Concealment is the only boon I claim;

Obscure be still the unsuccessful Muse,

Who cannot raise, but would not sink, thy fame.

Oh! of my life at once the source and joy!

If e'er thy eyes these feeble lines survey,

Let their folly their intent destroy;

Accept the tribute-but forget the lay.

Fanny Burney, Evelina, 1778.

The poem was dedicated, but dedication hidden, to Fanny Burney's father, who was kept in ignorance of the writing and following publication of her first book. This poem forms the first page of the book, which was at first only published accredited to 'A lady Author'. The book is in fact not her first but the sequel to an earlier destroyed piece.

Folly

A name given to any costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder,

- Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

But it's much, much more than that. The folly, particularly in Britain, is an attitude, a statement, a style, a fashion, a passion, a different world. . .

Follies may be found all over the world, but the British were first to recognise their worth and importance. . .

Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp have spent over thirty years reasearching 'rogue architecture'. They are co-founders of the Folly Fellowship.

Above text taken from the blurb on the back cover of Follies Grottoes and Garden Buildings by Headley and Meulenkamp, Aurem Press, 1999

…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/

Courtesy of Fiona; found on her blog: http://fionahunter-boyd.blogspot.com/

He had a very human eye. He understood mankind's follies and had a soft spot for them,but his work shows a certain delight in condemning low life.

David Hockney on William Hogarth in an article by George Kent in the spring edition of Readers Digest.

Folly is an endless maze, tangled roots perplex her ways.

Blake

Few follies are as absolutely useless as their strict definition requires.

Page 189, Eccentric Britain.

It is folly to linger in this manner. I will not torment myself any longer by remaining among friends whose society it is impossible for me now to enjoy.

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen.

Folly history bristles (as it should) with thorny queries. Just as no one can account for the ninteenth - century revival of interest in tilting (Sir Walter's Disease; said Mark Twain), no one really knows why a certain man will devote twenty years to surfacing he house with crockery shards and teapot lids; no one can fully share the squires impulse to retire to his own Toad Hall, or somebody's longing for a battlemented bicycle shed at the bottom of his garden, or something very nasty to gothicize his woodshed.

Page 11, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

Some of us take for granted are usually monuments to human foolishness; flimsy prisons that have failed to save daughters from abduction, bosoms from asps, and sons - and heirs from vengeful witches.

Page 8, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

There are many 'borderline' follies, for the simple reason that no all-embracing definition of a folly exists. Follyhood has to be felt as well as seen.

Page 8, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.





Painting by Paul Brason
http://www.paulbrason.co.uk/index.htm

Not every foolishly - conceived building is a folly, of course, nor is every folly pointless, gemcrack or tasteless.

Page 8, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

Almost anyone, almost anywhere is liable at any time to come upon a forgotten, nameless, but undoubtedly man-man structure with that over solemnity, raffishness, hint of menace, or glaring inappropriateness that mark it as a folly.

Page 8, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

Let nobody please bother to ask 'What is it for?' For to that question there is only one answer. The mark of a true folly is that it was errected simply to satisfy and give pleasure to it's builder and to use Sansovino's words 'greatly surprize the stranger'. There could be not better aim or epitaph for any buildings, nor, for any publication.

Foreword, Follies, Ed Sir Hugh Casson.

Of Folly buildings

“What was chosen for what site in what style, depended on taste, place, money, materials and fashion; success was as capricious as fashion”
Page 33 F & G

In making the attempt to define the undefineable, many scholars have tended to overlook the element of eccentricity, which is an integral part of every folly builders personality.

Monumental Follies, Stuart Barton.

“Influence is a sufficiently difficult word to use of professionals, who, one can be reasonably certain, do see another’s work. But with follies, everything is so unsure; Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor and Kent built some of the very earliest follies, and then the amateurs largely took over, and who knows what they saw and worked for, with whose aid and how; it is easy to oversimplify, and follies are by no means simple but the result of many fuddled ‘influences’.”

“With good luck, the builder might be a man of great taste and imagination, and become a specialist, with bad luck, the thing fell down”

Follies fragility.
Page 2 F & G.

Follies were built with the directness and complexity of a doodle on the blotting pad!

Page 36, Follies and Grottoes, Barbara Jones.

“They are cut off from worldly contacts and loose all humanity, becoming more mineral than artefact, resolving into stones again.”

Of buildings named follies

Page 3, Follies & Grottoes, Barbara Jones.

Folly n. a popular name for any costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder.
Oxford English Dictionary

Folly n. silliness or weakness of mind: a foolish thing: sin: a monument of folly, as a great useless structure, or one left unfinished, having been begun without a reckoning of the cost. To act with folly. Origin French folie – foolish.
Chambers English Dictionary

Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen includes a dog called Folly.

Mrs Selwyn was frequently away on her travels for weeks at a time, or was about her business, seeing to the numerous flats she let in town and in nearby villages. As long as the weather permitted, Dr Selwyn liked to be out of doors, and especially in the flint-built hermitage in a remote corner of the garden, which he called his folly and which he had furnished with the essentials.

Page 10, The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald.

A little hobby of mine; which gives me a strange feeling of satisfaction; mainly upon finding them. Displaced from their original context I would imagine they seem meaningless. I don't imagine they appear of any interest, however this page gives me a means of storing them.