“I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the wisdom of indifference.”
J'ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de l'indifférence.
Pt. II, ch. 4
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)
Variant: I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the wisdom of indifference.
“I should prefer uneloquent good sense to loquacious folly”
Malim equidem indisertam prudentiam quam stultitiam loquacem
Book III, chapter 34, section 142; J. S. Watson's translation
De Oratore – On the Orator (55 BC)
Lee Scoresby and Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)
Context: "You have a strange way about you, Dr. Grumman. You ever spend any time among the witches?"
"Yes," said Grumman. "And among academicians, and among spirits. I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same."
"And this journey we're on? Is that folly or wisdom?"
"The greatest wisdom I know."
"Tell me again what your purpose is. You're going to find the bearer of this subtle knife, and what then?"
"Tell him what his task is."
"And that's a task that includes protecting Lyra," the aeronaut reminded him.
"It will protect all of us."
“Forgiveness is too easy. I can forget by indifference, but not forgive. I prefer revenge.”
“Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.”
“Love calls it folly, what so wisdom saith.”
Nè consiglio d'uom sano Amor riceve.
Canto V, stanza 78 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)
“To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly.”
“The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.”
Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 12
“All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.”
Letter to B. A. Hinsdale, (21 April 1880), in The Nation's Hero — In Memoriam : The Life of James Abram Garfield (1881) by J. M. Bundy, p. 216 http://books.google.com/books?id=mlTUAAAAMAAJ
1880s
