quotations about fools
There are two indiscretions that generally distinguish fools: a readiness to report whatever they hear, and a practice of communicating with secrecy what is commonly understood.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Harper's magazine, Aug. 1990
O! I am Fortune's fool.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook F", Aphorisms
If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. FIELDS
Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Voyage to Vinland"
There may be no fool like an old fool, but our observation has been that the young fool runs him a pretty close second.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1754
Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.
AESOP
Aesop's Fables
When a fool dies there is much shedding of tears in the land whither he is bound.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Bobok
The angels must tremble when a fool is in the right.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
He must be a thorough fool who can learn nothing from his own folly.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Fashion! -- a word which knaves and fools may use,
Their knavery and folly to excuse.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
The Rosciad
Too many men are afraid of being fools.
HENRY FORD
"In Bondage to a Reputation," Ford Ideals
Because other people are fools, must you be so too?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
The difference between a puppy and a fool is this--the one is born blind and continues so for nine days only, while the other remains with his eyes shut all his life.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Ten gods cannot change the opinion of one fool, especially if another fool agrees with him.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
When dunces call us fools, without proving us to be so, our best retort is to prove them to be fools, without condescending to call them so.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon