Quotes about fool
page 6

“You think that's the solution to everything, don't you, Bane? Drinking and dancing and making love… but I tell you this, something is coming, and we'd be fools to ignore it."
"When have I ever claimed not to be a fool?”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Rise of the Hotel Dumort

Love, Making love, Fools, Drink

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Fools, Intelligence, Time

“The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret… but you wont find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.”

Christopher Priest book The Prestige

Source: The Prestige

Secret, Fools

“I began to see why woman-haters could make such fools of women. Woman-haters were like gods: invulnerable and chock-full of power. They descended, and then they disappeared. You could never catch one.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 9

Women, God, Fools

“You can't fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Fools

“I've heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

People, Lie, Fools

“I worry about the men of your time, Grace. They all seem to be great fools. (Julian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

Men, Fools, Time

“Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of him than that.”

Patricia A. McKillip (1948) American fantasy writer

Smile, Fools

“Love can change us beyond recognition, we become love-sick, soft-eyed jelly-bellied fools.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: One Hundred Names

Love, Fools, Change

“Don't be a fool for the Devil, darling.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Fools

“A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Fools, Thinking, Fight

“Patti, did art get us?'
I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.'
Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

Fools, Art, Thinking

“I wasn't fooled. He was avoiding looking at me. "There's nothing to talk about."
"I knew you'd say that. Actually, it was a toss-up between that and 'I don't know what you're talking about.'"
Dimitri sighed.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Fools

“Only a fool walks into the future backwards.”

Terry Goodkind book Stone of Tears

Source: Stone of Tears

Fools, Future

“The Truth is in the prolouge.
Death to the romantic fool.,
the expert in solitary confinement.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

Death, Truth, Fools

“I will tell you something about stories… They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”

Leslie Marmon Silko book Ceremony

Source: Ceremony

Death, Fools, Fight

“He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Fools

“Every fool in error can find a passage of scripture to back him up”

John Howard Griffin book Black Like Me

Source: Black Like Me

Fools, Error

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

World, Beauty, Hope, Fools

“Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.”

Umberto Eco book Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

Fools, Personality

““From now on I'm thinking only of me.” Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: “But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way?” “Then,” said Yossarian, “I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?””

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961)

Smile, Fools, Way, Feeling

“There are more fools in the world than there are people.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

As quoted in One Big Fib : The Incredible Story of the Fraudulent First International Bank of Grenada (2003) by Owen Platt, p. 37

People, World, Fools

“Fools that will laugh on earth, most weep in hell.”

Christopher Marlowe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Source: Doctor Faustus

Fools, Hell

“What are you doing here, bridgeboy?” Adolin hissed from within his helmet.
“Playing one of the ten fools.”
Adolin grunted. “Welcome to the party.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Fools

“It may be well to repeat here the saying that old men talk of what they have done, young men of what they are doing, and fools of what they expect to do. The Negro race has a rather large share of the last mentioned class.”

Carter G. Woodson book The Mis-Education of the Negro

Source: The Mis-Education of the Negro

Men, Fools

“Does he write to you? Never a line. Does he send you a message? Never a word. It is because he loves you, poor fool, and is trying to forget you, since you are not free to listen to him or to belong to him.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Love, Fools, Forgetting

“Love - true love - is a precious thing. It is painful, uncomfortable, makes fools of us all, but it is what breathes meaning and color and purpose into our lives.”

Kate Mosse book Sepulchre

Source: Sepulchre

Love, Pain, Fools, Color

“If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Fools, Funny, Success

“Like a fool, I fell in love with you,
Turned my whole world upside down”

Eric Clapton (1945) English musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist

Love, World, Fools

“When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.”

Cynthia Heimel (1947–2018) American writer

"Lower Manhattan Survival Tactics" in The Village Voice (1983)

Fools, Hell

“I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.”

David Gerrold (1944) American screenwriter and novelist

Source: A Matter for Men

Fools

“Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Fools, Forgetting

“Silence is the virtue of a fool.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book VI, xxxi
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Fools, Silence

“Rules and school are tools for fools! I don't give two mules for rules.”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

School, Fools

“Myrnin:I could murder a cheeseburger right now
Oliver:focus ya fool”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Morganville Vampires, Volume 4

Fools

“A fool and his money are soon elected.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Money, Fools

“What fools these mortals be. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Fools

“You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing.”

Laurie R. King book The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Source: The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Fools, Help, Housing

“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

Truth, Fools

“Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Fools

“To err is human, to forgive divine. (Acheron)
I don’t ask for your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I only ask for a chance to show you now that I’m not the fool I was once. (Styxx)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Second Chances

Fools, Forgiveness, Chance

“Drunk, Jane spoke as though she were Nancy Drew. I was a fool for a girl with a dainty lexicon.”

Michael Chabon book The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Source: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Fools, Girl

“A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: Advice to a Young Critic

Fools, Learning

“Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Fools, Personality

“A daughter,' Rowley scooped up the child and held her high. The baby blinked from sleep and crowed with him. 'Any fool can have a son,' he said. 'It takes a man to conceive a daughter.”

Diana Norman (1933–2011) British author and journalist

Source: The Serpent's Tale

Fools, Sleep, Baby, Daughters

“History – An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Fools, History, Falseness

“There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information

Wisdom, World, Fools, Understanding

“If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Journal for Saturday, 27th November 1813; Quoted in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron by Thomas Moore (1830), Vol III, Chap. XVII, p. 208 http://books.google.com/books?id=nloLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA208

Wisdom, Fools, Envy

“The Ancient Egyptians were not fools, Carter. They built the pyramids. They created the first great nation state. Their civilization lasted thousands of years.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And now they’re gone.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Fools

“Fool!" cried the hunchback. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well known is this: 'Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Death, War, Fools

“Baby," I said, "I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me."

She looked down at me. "Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

Fools, Drink, Baby

“You can't argue with the fools in the world. It's better to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

World, Fools, Way

“I'm solitary as a pulled tooth,
Lonely as an unwelcome truth,
Lost as a minnow out of school,
A genius in a crop of fools.”

Gail Carson Levine Fairest

Source: Fairest

Truth, School, Fools

“You can't fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.''

"No time. I have enough trouble keeping you in line.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Fools, Time

“I took Sin on faith, but if faith were money, fools would be billionaires.”

Nina Malkin

Source: Swoon

Money, Faith, Fools

“Let your heart look
on white sea spray
and be lonely.

Love is a fool star.

You and a ring of stars
may mention my name
and then forget me.

Love is a fool star.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Love, Fools, Star, Heart

“the wise may be instructed by a fool”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel

Fools

“I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.”

Iain Banks book The Bridge

Source: The Bridge

People, Fools, Thinking

“I've got a hangover."
"No, you hit your head on the floor."
"I can't stay. I've got to rescue that fool Sophie.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

Fools

“I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to lady crack pipe or good sir dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Fools, Sex

“Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Fools, Spring, Bird

“How do you know, poor fool? Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence'; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.”

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) Italian scholar and poet

Source: Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta

Fools, Soul

“Are we meant to take more than we give
or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, Alfie,
then I guess it's wise to be cruel.”

Hal David (1921–2012) American lyricist

Song Alfie

Fools

“These are smart people;
They receive a mess from the east, and a good life from the west;
They never rush because only life rushes;
They are not interested in what awaits after tomorrow;
What is meant to be will come, and little of it depends on them;
When they are together they are in trouble, for this they do not like to be together often;
They rarely trust anyone, but it’s easiest to fool them with nice words;
They do not resemble heroes, but they are not easily scared with threats;
They pay attention to nothing, they care not of what happens around them;
And then out of nowhere suddenly everything interests them, they flip everything and look around;
Then they become sleepers again and do not like to remember what came to pass;
They are scared of change because it often brings evil;
They are easily fed up with a man, even if he does them good;Strange people;
They talk bad about you but love you, kiss you on the cheek but hate you;
Laugh at noble deeds but remember them;
They spend most of their life on spite and goodness;
And don’t know which is stronger when;
Evil, good, gentle, raw, unable to move on, stormy, open, hidden;
They are all this and everything in between;
And most importantly they are mine, and I am theirs;
And everything I’m saying; I’m saying about myself.”

Meša Selimović (1910–1982) Yugoslav-Bosnian writer

Poem

Love, Life, Hate, People

“When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, "A fool cannot hold his tongue."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Demaratus
Laconic Apophthegms

Fools

“4867. There cannot be a more intolerable Thing than a fortunate Fool.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Fools

““Fool. There is no why. The very word is a semantic fallacy. Ask me how and I can lay out for you cause and effect, one thing leading to another, the alcohol acting on a grieving man’s mind, the door inadequately guarded, the people within isolated from the common lot of humanity by the dreadful secret of their ancestry.”
He rattled his glass.
Nathan refilled it.
Faust drank. “But to ask why,” he continued, “implies that things happen for a purpose, and they do not. There is no purpose, no direction, no guidance to events. Nothing means anything. The world is a howling desert of meaningless, and reason is useless before it. There is only blind event.”
He stared off into the bleak landscapes of the future while Nathan refilled his glass and refilled his glass and refilled his glass.
He saw so clearly now, without delusion or hope. It was a crystal night of the soul.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 19, “Ashes” (pp. 327-328)

People, Alcohol, Secret, World

“In blaming others, fools their folly show,
And most attempt to speak when least they know.”

John Hoole (1727–1803) British translator

Book XXVIII, line 7
Translations, Orlando Furioso of Ludovico Ariosto (1773)

Fools

“Better to say nothing and be thought a fool,” said Amarelle, “than to interfere in the business of wizards and remove all doubt.”

Scott Lynch (1978) American writer

In George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (eds.) Rogues (p. 245)
Short fiction, A Year and a Day in Old Theradane (2014)

Fools, Business, Funny

“I'd hear, "Because they paid the man, there's no money for the woman." How many times do you think I heard this? Over and over. Then I became a sex symbol. Now, how the hell did that happen? I don't exactly know the moment when it happened, but all of a sudden I'm a bombshell. The way I discovered this was I did Desperado. I had a very hard time with the love scene. I cried throughout the love scene. That's why you never see long pieces of the love scene — it's little pieces cut together. I'm crying most of the time so they have to take little pieces. It took eight hours instead of an hour. I nearly got fired. … Because I didn't want to be naked in front of a camera. The whole time, I'm thinking of my father and my brother… And then when the movie comes out, I read the first review. What do they say about me. "Salma Hayek is a bombshell." I had heard that when a movie does badly here, they say it bombs. So I'm crying. Thinking they're saying, "That terrible actress! It's a bomb! Salma Hayek is the worst part of the movie!" I called my friend and said, "The critics are destroying me!" She says, "No, they're saying you're very sexy." And then I look at all the reviews, and everybody said I was very sexy. So I'm very confused. I said, "I wonder if that's good or bad." I hear, "Yes, that's good." Then I do Fools Rush In, and I'm a pregnant woman. And they say I'm sexy again! I go, "But I'm pregnant!"”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

I'm not even naked in this movie, and they still say I'm sexy. And then it became very depressing — I thought, I guess I'm reduced to that now. That's all I am in the perception of these people.
O interview (2003)

Love, Money, People, Fools

“Fools make researches and wise men exploit them—that is our earthly way of dealing with the question, and we thank Heaven for an assumed abundance of financially impotent and sufficiently ingenious fools.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 2, sect. 5

Men, Fools, Way, Question

“Why did my parents send me to the schools
That I with knowledge might enrich my mind?
Since the desire to know first made men fools,
And did corrupt the root of all mankind.”

John Davies (poet) (1569–1626) English poet, lawyer, and politician, born 1569

Stanza 1.
Nosce Teipsum (1599)

Men, School, Fools, Knowledge

“Trouble comes looking for you if you’re a fool.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

To the Storming Gulf, p. 126 (Originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1985)
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Fools

“There, take (says Justice), take ye each a shell:
We thrive at Westminster on fools like you;
'T was a fat oyster,—live in peace,—adieu.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Reported in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 832: "Verbatim from Boileau", written c. 1740, published 1741.. Compare: "Tenez voilà", dit-elle, "à chacun une écaille, Des sottises d'autrui nous vivons au Palais; Messieurs, l'huître étoit bonne. Adieu. Vivez en paix", Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux, Epître II. (à M. l'Abbé des Roches).

Peace, Justice, Fools

“.. and then it remains you to re-create your study, the fragment, into a painting. For remember; these are two [different] things: Nature is the material from which we must take. But don't be fooled by the modern theories, that imitating, copying nature would be 'everything'. The goal, the Art's aim is …. to move..”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek (original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) ..en dan blijft u over, om de studie, het fragment, tot schilderij te herscheppen. Want vergeet niet, dat dat twee [verschillende] dingen zijn: De natuur is de stof, waaruit wij moeten putten. Maar laat u niet door de moderne (Jeltes: hij bedoelde hier waarschijnlijk de Belgische neo-impressionistische) theoriën wijsmaken, dat het navolgen, het copieeren der natuur 'alles' is. Het doel, het streven van de Kunst is.. ..te ontroeren.. Quote of Roelofs, in a letter to his pupil Frans Smissaert, 8 June 1886; as cited in Willem Roelofs (1822—1922), by Mr. H. F. W. Jeltes, in Maandschrift Elsevierweekblad... http://maandschrift.elsevierweekblad.nl/EGM/1922/01/19220101/EGM-19220101-0268/story.pdf, Jan. 1922, p. 222 1880's

Fools, Art, Nature, Study

“What makes The Joker tick I wonder?” Fredric said. “I mean what are his real motivations?”
“Consider him at any level of conduct,” Bruce said slowly, “in the home, on the street, in interpersonal relations, in jail—always there is an extraordinary contradiction. He is dirty and compulsively neat, aloof and desperately gregarious, enthusiastic and sullen, generous and stingy, a snappy dresser and a scarecrow, a gentleman and a boor, given to extremes of happiness and despair, singularly well able to apply himself and capable of frittering away a lifetime in trivial pursuits, decorous and unseemly, kind and cruel, tolerant yet open to the most outrageous varieties of bigotry, a great friend and an implacable enemy, a lover and abominator of women, sweet-spoken and foul-mouthed, a rake and a puritan, swelling with hubris and haunted by inferiority, outcast and social climber, felon and philanthropist, barbarian and patron of the arts, enamored of novelty and solidly conservative, philosopher and fool, Republican and Democrat, large of soul and unbearably petty, distant and brimming with friendly impulses, an inveterate liar and astonishingly strict with petty cash, adventurous and timid, imaginative and stolid, malignly destructive and a planter of trees on Arbor Day—I tell you frankly, the man is a mess.”
“That’s extremely well said Bruce,” Fredric stated. “I think you’ve given a very thoughtful analysis.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“I was paraphrasing what Mark Schorer said about Sinclair Lewis,” Bruce replied.
“The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”.
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Women, Happiness, Fools, Art

“Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, except "suckling their fools "; and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world or to others, but that they can throw it up at the first "claim of social life." They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which it is their " duty " to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Life, Women, Books, World

“Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of "eccentricity" it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 9

Fools, Thinking, Indifference

“When the world’s run by fools it’s the duty of intelligence to disobey.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

Quoted in The Guardian (25 February 2006).

World, Fools, Intelligence

“Love is just a little bit of death in the heart,
For how often can one love in certainty that love will be returned?
Giving so much love, and receiving so little of it;
Because people are fickle, or indifferent? Who knows?
During moments together as in hours apart,
I'm mindful that the moon fades, flowers wither, souls pass away…
They wander lost in the somber darkness of sorrow,
Those fools who follow the footprints of love.
Because life is an endless desert,
And love is an entangling web.
Love is just a little bit of death in the heart.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Love" [Yêu], as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, pp. 86–87, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 162
Variant translation by Huỳnh Sanh Thông:
To love is to die a little in the heart,
for when you love can you be sure you're loved?
You give so much, so little you get back—
the other lets you down or looks away.
Together or apart, it's still the same.
The moon turns pale, blooms fade, the soul's bereaved...
They'll lose their way amidst dark sorrowland,
those passionate fools who go in search of love.
And life will be a desert bare of joy,
and love will tie the knot that binds to grief.
To love is to die a little in the heart.

Love, Life, Death, People

“What fools these mortals be!”
Tanta stultitia mortalium est.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter I: On Saving Time

Fools

“Admitting you are a nature poet, nowadays, may make you seem something of a fool!”

Don McKay (1942) Canadian poet

Baler Twine

Fools, Nature

“[If] you don't have any soul and you don't have any talent, jazz is what you should do. … any fool can do it; all you gotta do is practice.”

Stewart Copeland (1952) American musician; drummer of The Police

From an interview published at JamBase.com http://www.JamBase.com

Fools, Soul

“Can a political human being, who wants to call herself a socialist, in her wildest imagination believe that Swedish social democracy could ever resist the dictatorship of the few? In that case, this person would find herself amongst fools and idiots. But this desire to see something radical amongst the social democratic leadership is the curse of the common left.”

Frank Baude (1936) Swedish politician

Frank Baude in Mot strömmen, pg 124. Translated from Swedish.

Fools, Democracy, Imagination, Personality

“We must mention the higher, nobler wealth, which does not belong to all, but to truly noble and divinely gifted men. This wealth is bestowed by wisdom through the doctrines and principles of ethic, logic and physic, and from these spring the virtues, which rid the soul of its proneness to extravagance, and engender the love of contentment and frugality, which will assimilate it to God. For God has no wants, He needs nothing, being in Himself all-sufficient to Himself, while the fool has many wants, ever thirsting for what is not there, longing to gratify his greedy and insatiable desire, which he fans into a blaze like a fire and brings both great and small within its reach. But the man of worth has few wants, standing midway between mortality and immortality.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

167-169.
On the Virtues

Love, Wisdom, Men, God

“Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand.”

H. G. Wells book The First Men in the Moon

Source: The First Men in the Moon (1901), Ch. 18: In the Sunlight

Fools, Science, Time

“Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
And all the fools that crowd thee so,
Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
A village less than Islington wilt grow,
A solitude almost.”

Abraham Cowley Of Solitude

Of Solitude, vii; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Men, Fools, Solitude

“in our society at all levels not only uneducated but educated as well are dominated by superstitions of various kinds. The superstitions of the educated are only more sophisticated than those of the uneducated. So one needs to introduce real knowledge in place of superstitious beliefs. You need to explain to people believing in superstitious ideas that the ideas are not correct and this can be verified experimentally. When doing science popularization you have to express some facts of the real universe or the real world to the person who is not willing to believe in it and if you express it in a very pedantic way or say to the person that you are a fool, you should not believe this then it is not good because then he will believe in his superstitions even more. So you have to persuade him to think for himself, you don’t tell him what to believe but you ask him to try this experiment and see what is the reality. So that way you may be able to convince the person.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

People, World, Education, Fools

“With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og,
For every inch that is not fool is rogue :
A monstrous mass of fuul corrupted matter,
As all the devils had spew'd to make the baiter.
When wine has given him courage to blaspheme,
He curses God, but God before curst him;
And, if man could have reason, none has more.
That made his paunch so rich, and him so poor.”

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel

Pt. II, lines 462–469.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

God, Fools, Courage, Wine

“Now a life of leisure and a pirate's treasure
Don't make much for tragedy.
But it's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin
And can't stand the company.
Every fool's got a reason to feelin' sorry for himself
And turn his heart to stone.
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell,
And I feel like I'm comin' home.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Better Days"
Song lyrics, Lucky Town (1992)

Life, Sadness, Fools, Feeling

“A question about the authenticity of the soul, I suppose. Or the wishbone—some little tug-of-war; some tension. The tension I have come to depend upon. That is what I mean by brown. The answer is that I cannot reconcile. I was born a Catholic. Is homosexuality, then, a conversion experience? No. I was born gay. Is Catholicism ever a choice? Yes. No. Not at first. I embraced Catholicism without question. It was the air, it was the light. Years later, I came to Catholicism in deliberation, defeat—satirically, perhaps—nevertheless on my knees. How else to approach a church established for losers, for a kingdom not of this world, a kingdom of fools? Whatever faith I confess is based upon my certainty that I can do nothing.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

War, World, Faith, Fools

“Fools have a way of discovering…that the laws of time travel, like the laws of physics, have no pity and no remorse.”

Robert Lynn Asprin (1946–2008) American science fiction and fantasy author

Source: Ripping Time (2000), Chapter 4 (p. 98; ellipses indicate a minor elision of description)

Law, Fools, Way, Travel

“I could make you satisfied in everything you do,All your secret wishes could right now be coming trueAnd be forever with my poisoned armsAround you.No one's gonna fool around with us.”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Angeles.
Lyrics, Either/Or (1997)

Secret, Fools

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

" Cargo Cult Science http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm", adapted from a 1974 Caltech commencement address; also published in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, p. 343 Variant: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

Fools, Personality