“Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
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Jonathan Swift141
Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet 1667–1745Related quotes
“When thou findest thyself scorning another, look then at thy own heart and laugh at thy folly.”
Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma
Jane Brereton (1685–1740) Welsh writer (b. Flintshire 1685)
On Beau Nash's Picture at full length between the Busts of Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Pope., in Dyce, Specimens of British Poetesses. This epigram is generally ascribed to Chesterfield. See Campbell, English Poets, note, p. 521. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.”
Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher
This was declared without citation to have been attributed to Avicenna in A Rationalist Encyclopaedia : A Book of Reference on Religion, Philosophy, Ethics, and Science (1950), by Joseph McCabe, p. 43; it was also later wrongly attributed to Averroes in The Atheist World (1991) by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, p. 46. It actually originates as a statement by the atheist Al-Maʿarri, earlier translated into English in A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern (1906) by John Mackinnon Robertson, Vol. I, Ch. VIII : Freethought under Islam, p. 269, in the form: "The world holds two classes of men ; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
Misattributed
“A young woman can live off the folly of men; a man of any age can live off the folly of women.”
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist
Source: Epigrams, p. 346
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet