FOOLS AND FOOLISHNESS

A fool despises good counsel, but a wise man takes it to heart.
Confucius

The folly of all follies is to be love sick for a shadow.
Lord Alfred Tennyson

You ask whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not such a fool as that. But if one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the things they call love, I have what is better -- the experience of Sappho, of Euripides, of Catallus, of Shakespeare, of Spenser, of Austen, of Bronte, of anyone else I have read.
C. S. Lewis

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
Chinese Proverbs

If a man fools me once, shame on him. If he fools me twice, shame on me.
Chinese Proverbs

Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
African Proverbs

He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals.
Miguel De Cervantes

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.
Source Unknown

Don't approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.
Jewish Proverbs

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Most fools think they are only ignorant.
Benjamin Franklin

The world is full of fools and faint hearts; and yet everyone has courage enough to bear the misfortunes, and wisdom enough to manage the affairs of his neighbor.
Benjamin Franklin

Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more, and float upward in our heedlessness, singing Gratia Dei sum quod sum.
John Updike

It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
George Bernard Shaw

Folly is perennial, yet the human race has survived.
Bertrand Russell

He who knows he who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool, shun him; He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child, teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep, wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise, follow him.
Persian Proverbs

In life, each of us must sometimes play the fool.
Yiddish Proverbs

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Source Unknown

Its quite true there's a fool born every minute. It's also quite true they don't die that fast.
Source Unknown

A spoon does not know the taste of soup, nor a learned fool the taste of wisdom.
Welsh Proverbs

They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
Thomas Brackett Reed

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

While intelligent people can often simplify the complex, a fool is more likely to complicate the simple.
Gerald W. Grumet

A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.
Nicholas Boileau

In days gone by, we were afraid of dying in dishonor or a state of sin. Nowadays, we are afraid of dying fools. Now the fact is that there is no Extreme Unction to absolve us of foolishness. We endure it here on earth as subjective eternity.
Jean Baudrillard

He is a fool that kisseth the maid when he may kiss the mistress.
English Proverbs

The fool needs company, the wise solitude.
Ruckett

The dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.
William Shakespeare

Why fools are endowed by nature with voices so much louder than sensible people possess is a mystery. It is a fact emphasized throughout history.
Hertzler

What a fool does in the end, the wise do in the beginning.
Spanish Proverbs

The wise make proverbs, and fools repeat them.
Isaac Disraeli

There are four types of men in this world: 1. The man who knows, and knows that he knows; he is wise, so consult him. 2. The man who knows, but doesn't know that he knows; help him not forget what he knows. 3. The man who knows not, and knows that he knows not; teach him. 4. Finally, there is the man who knows not but pretends that he knows; he is a fool, so avoid him.
Ibn Gabirol

In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without me. People can't long tolerate a ruler, nor can a master his servant, a maid her mistress, a teacher his pupil, a friend his friend nor a wife her husband, a landlord his tenant, a soldier his comrade nor a party-goer his companion, unless they sometimes have illusions about each other, make use of flattery, and have the sense to turn a blind eye and sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly.
Desiderius Erasmus

The great God endows His children variously. To some he gives intellect -- and they move the earth. To some he allots heart -- and the beating pulse of humanity is theirs. But to some He gives only a soul, without intelligence -- and these, who never grow up, but remain always His children, are God's fools, kindly, elemental, simple, as if from His palette the Artist of all had taken one color instead of many.
Mary Roberts Rinehart

How many fools does it take to make up a public?
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

Greatest fools are the most often satisfied.
Nicholas Boileau

Foolproof systems do not take into account the ingenuity of fools.
Gene Brown

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.
Mark Twain

Lord, what fools these mortals be.
William Shakespeare

No one but a fool would measure their satisfaction by what the world thinks of it.
Oliver Goldsmith

Every fool finds a greater one to admire them.
Bioleau

Seek but provision of bread and wine, fools to flatter, and clothing fine; and nothing of God shall ever be thine.
Wes Smith

There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured.
Henry Ford

The fool has to do at last what the wise did at first.
Italian Proverbs

The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Fools build houses, and wise men buy them.
English Proverbs

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?
Maurice Freehill

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld