“Greatest fools are oft most satisfied.”
Le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait.
Satire 4, l. 128
Satires (1716)
Original
Le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait.
Satires (1716)
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Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux 30
French poet and critic 1636–1711Related quotes
“Any simpleton can speak with confidence. Sometimes the greatest fools have the most bravado.”
Source: Keys to the Demon Prison
“Oft has good nature been the fool's defence,
And honest meaning gilded want of sense.”
To a Lady (1736)
Source: Utilitarianism (1861), Ch. 2
Context: It is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
“There is no description of a fool, he said, that you fail to satisfy.”
No Country for Old Men (2005)
Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 6, Hierarchies, Complex Fractal Dimensions, And Log Periodicity, p. 185.
“In man's most dark extremity
Oft succour dawns from Heaven.”
Canto I, stanza 20.
The Lord of the Isles (1815)
“Anyone who rushes toward an unknown peril simply to satisfy a desire for excitement is a fool.”
Part 2, Chapter 3 (p. 78)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)
“The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.”