quotations about fools
Fools are very often found united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
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
There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.
WILLIAM GOLDING
Nobel Lecture, Dec. 7, 1983
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
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
O! I am Fortune's fool.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
When a fool dies there is much shedding of tears in the land whither he is bound.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
He must be a thorough fool who can learn nothing from his own folly.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook F", Aphorisms
Fashion! -- a word which knaves and fools may use,
Their knavery and folly to excuse.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
The Rosciad
Ten gods cannot change the opinion of one fool, especially if another fool agrees with him.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
We must often consider, not what the wise will think, but what the foolish will be sure to say.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
The man who is foolish at the termination of his life shall always remain a fool.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
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
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
Children and fools speak true.
JOHN LYLY
Endymion
Too many men are afraid of being fools.
HENRY FORD
"In Bondage to a Reputation," Ford Ideals
The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1754