Folly; piece of folly. [ French ]

Folly grows without watering. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Unreasonable silence is folly. [ Proverb ]

Folly is often sick of itself. [ Proverb ]

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame. [ Byron ]

Into contradicting
Be thou never led away;
When with the ignorant they strive,
The wise to folly fall away. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The short folly is always the best. [ French ]

Beauty and folly go often together. [ French Proverb ]

No concealing folly save by silence.

Folly ends where genuine hope begins. [ Cowper ]

Alas for the folly of the loquacious! [ Seneca ]

Wisdom rises upon the ruins of folly. [ Proverb ]

All human wisdom, to divine, is folly. [ Sir J. Denham ]

Folly always deserves its misfortunes. [ A. Preault ]

Fortune makes folly her peculiar care. [ Churchill ]

Folly is the queen regent of the world. [ Proverb ]

Mingle a little folly with your wisdom. [ Horace ]

Praise a fool, and you water his folly. [ Proverb ]

Nature has made man's breast no windows
To publish what he does within doors,
Nor what dark secrets there inhabit,
Unless his own rash folly blab it. [ Butler ]

The folly of a mother is a heavy burden. [ Racine ]

Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turned to folly. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona,  Act I. Sc.1 ]

Folly is never long pleased with itself. [ Proverb ]

Knowledge is folly unless grace guide it. [ George Herbert ]

I know
The past and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors, and derive
Experience from his folly;
For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul
Requires no other heaven. [ Shelley ]

Silence is wisdom, when speaking is folly. [ Proverb ]

Wisdom, though richer than Peruvian mines.
And sweeter than the sweet ambrosial hive.
What is she, but the means of happiness?
That unobtain'd, than folly more a fool. [ Young ]

It is great folly to wish only to be wise. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Time spent in vice or folly is doubly lost. [ Proverb ]

If folly were grief, every house would weep. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise. [ Pope ]

It is folly to shiver over last year's snow. [ Whately ]

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy. [ Milton ]

The soul shut up in her dark room,
Viewing so clear abroad, at home sees nothing;
But, like a mole in earth, busy and blind,
Works all her folly up, and casts it outward
To the world's open view. [ John Dryden ]

A man's folly ought to be his greatest secret. [ Proverb ]

Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease.
Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please. [ Pope ]

There is no jollity but hath a smack of folly. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Both folly and wisdom come upon us with years. [ Proverb ]

Where ignorance is bliss 'Tis folly to be wise. [ Gray ]

The wise and active conquer difficulties,
By daring to attempt them. Sloth and folly
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and hazards,
And make the impossibility they fear. [ Rowe ]

Folly is the product of all countries and ages. [ Proverb ]

Trade hardly deems the busy day begun,
Till his keen eye along the sheet has run;
The blooming daughter throws her needle by.
And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh;
While the grave mother puts her glasses on.
And gives a tear to some old crony gone.
The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down,
To know what last new folly fills the town;
Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things.
The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings. [ Sprague ]

For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance. [ William Shakespeare ]

The chief disease that reigns this year is folly. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance. [ Proverb ]

A fool loses his estate before he finds his folly. [ Proverb ]

Conform to common custom, and not to common folly. [ Proverb ]

Where vain-glory reigns, folly is prime counsellor. [ Proverb ]

Folly is the one evil for which there is no remedy. [ Spanish Proverb ]

The amity which wisdom unites not, folly will untie. [ Proverb ]

Play may be good, but folly can never be of any use. [ Proverb ]

Who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

To affect folly on an occasion is consummate wisdom.

Folly as well as wisdom is justified by its children. [ Proverb ]

Fools are always resolute to make good their own folly. [ Proverb ]

The wisdom of one generation will be folly in the next. [ Priestley ]

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly. [ Coleridge ]

The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie. [ William Shakespeare ]

The most exquisite folly is made of wisdom too fine spun. [ Proverb ]

Full oft we see cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. [ Shakespeare ]

It is a great point of wisdom to find out one's own folly. [ Proverb ]

A man's wisdom is his best friend; folly, his worst enemy. [ Sir W. Temple ]

Ridiculous modes, invented by ignorance and adopted by folly. [ Smollett ]

No one should so act as to take advantage of another's folly. [ Cicero ]

Natural folly is bad enough, but learned folly is intolerable. [ Proverb ]

Folly and learning (such as it is) often dwell in the same person. [ Proverb ]

He must be a thorough fool who can learn nothing from his own folly. [ Hare ]

It is folly to seek the approbation of any being besides the Supreme. [ Addison ]

Folly was condemned to serve as a guide to Love whom she had blinded. [ La Fontaine ]

Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning. [ Colton ]

Wisdom without innocence is knavery, innocence without wisdom is folly. [ Proverb ]

Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly. [ Hazlitt ]

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly. [ Holmes ]

Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly. [ Swift ]

The wit of most women goes more to strengthen their folly than their reason. [ La Roche ]

The wisdom of women comes to them by inspiration, their folly by premeditation. [ Dumas, Pere ]

The world is not so much knave, that it holds honesty to be a vice and a folly. [ Proverb ]

Heed the still small voice that so seldom leads us wrong, and never into folly. [ Mme. Du Deffand ]

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people. [ James A. Garfield ]

He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. [ Bible ]

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

What folly can be ranker? Like our shadows, our wishes lengthen as our sun declines. [ Young ]

When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly. [ Dr. .Johnson ]

It is folly to tear one's hair in sorrow, as if grief could be assuaged by baldness. [ Cicero ]

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity. [ Swift ]

There are more fools than sages; and among the sages, there is more folly than wisdom. [ Chamfort ]

If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use. [ Addison ]

There is in hypocrisy as much folly as vice: it is as easy to be honest as to appear so. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly. [ Johnson ]

We are more heavily taxed by our idleness, pride and folly than we are taxed by government. [ Franklin ]

It is the ordinary way of the world to keep Folly at the helm, and Wisdom under the hatches. [ Proverb ]

The intellect of the generality of women serves more to fortify their folly than their reason. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Sometimes there are accidents in our lives the skillful extrication from which demands a little folly. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Men are so necessarily fools that it would be being a fool in a higher strain of folly, not to be a fool. [ Pascal ]

Prudence is a necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess. [ Jeremy Collier ]

The first degree of folly is to hold one's self wise, the second to profess it, the third to despise counsel. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Excess in apparel is another costly folly. The very trimming of the vain world would clothe all the naked one. [ William Penn ]

Can there be any greater folly than the respect you pay to men collectively when you despise them individually? [ Cicero ]

Folly is like the growth of weeds, always luxurious and spontaneous; wisdom, like flowers, requires cultivation. [ Hosea Ballou ]

The man who has taken one wife deserves a crown of patience; the man who has taken two deserves two crowns of folly. [ Proverb ]

There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly. [ Addison ]

Health is so necessary to all the duties as well as pleasures of life that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Wine leads to folly, making even the wise to laugh immoderately, to dance, and to utter what had better have been kept silent. [ Homer ]

The thing formed says that nothing formed it; and that which is made is, while that which made it is not! The folly is infinite. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

After a man has sown his wild oats in the years of his youth, he has still every year to get over a few weeks and days of folly. [ Richter ]

How can you make a fool perceive that he is a fool? Such a personage can no more see his own folly than he can see his own ears. [ Thackeray ]

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness. [ Pascal ]

No tongue can tell the joy of a pious mother, when her child is converted or turned from the way of folly to that of true wisdom. [ Mrs. Willard ]

It is the height of folly to throw up attempting because you have failed. Failures are wonderful elements in developing the character. [ Anon ]

When a man has been guilty of any vice or folly, I think the best atonement he can make for it is to warn others not to fall into the like. [ Addison ]

The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashions, and valuing ourselves by them, is one of the most childish pieces of folly that can be. [ Sir Matthew Hale ]

We may wager that any idea of the public, or any general opinion, is a folly, since it has received the approbation of a majority of the people. [ Chamfort ]

Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass? [ Montaigne ]

This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom - the very fashion of which passeth away. [ Fenelon ]

We are always more disposed to laugh at nonsense than at genuine wit; because the nonsense is more agreeable to us, being more conformable to our own natures: fools love folly, and wise men wisdom. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

Well was it said by a man of sagacity that dancing was a sort of privileged and reputable folly, and that the best way to be convinced of this was to close the ears and judge of it by the eyes alone. [ Gotthold ]

Surely it is better to enclose the gulf and hinder all access, than by encouraging us to advance a little, to entice us afterwards a little further, and let us perceive our folly only by our destruction. [ Johnson ]

The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it Axes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way. [ Pascal ]

Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength; there is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage. [ Hazlitt ]

Utopia! such is the name with which ignorance, folly, and incredulity have always characterized the great conceptions, discoveries, enterprises, and ideas which have illustrated the ages, and marked eras in human progress. [ E. de Girardin ]

With us all is inconsistency. France, seriously speaking, is the country of wit and folly, of industry and idleness, of philosophy and fanaticism, of gaiety and pedantry, laws and their abuses, good taste and impertinence. [ Voltaire ]

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears otherwise gives advantage to the danger; it is less folly not to endeavor the prevention of the evil thou fearest than to fear the evil which thy endeavor cannot prevent. [ Quarles ]

He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly. I never saw a perfect man. Every rose has its thorns, and every day its night. Even the sun shows spots, and the skies are darkened with clouds; and faults of some kind nestle in every bosom. [ Spurgeon ]

Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable. [ Addison ]

'Tis, in fact, utter folly to ask whether a person has anything from himself, or whether he has it from others, whether he operates by himself, or operates by means of others. The main point is to have a great will, and skill and perseverance to carry it out. All else is indifferent. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Nowadays enthusiasm is accounted folly; truth, cynicism; dissimulation, self-control; stiffness of manners, dignity; deception, cleverness; hypocrisy, decency; selfishness, economy; freedom of thought, effrontery; and superstition, the prop of human morals. What progress in language!

As the health and strength or weakness of our bodies is very much owing to their methods of treating us when we were young, so the soundness or folly of our minds is not less owing to those first tempers and ways of thinking which we eagerly received from the love, tenderness, authority, and constant conversation of our mothers. [ E. Law ]

I will not much commend others to themselves, I will not at all commend myself to others. So to praise any to their faces is a kind of flattery, but to praise myself to any is the height of folly. He that boasts his own praises speaks ill of himself, and much derogates from his true deserts. It is worthy of blame to affect commendation. [ Arthur Warwick ]

We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because for a time they are not remembered; he may, therefore, justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind. [ Johnson ]

It is a 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. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph. [ Addison ]

What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. [ Whipple ]