Fools

"Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue."

"Il y a des gens niais qui se connaissent, et qui emploient habilement leur niaiserie."

"Il n'y a point de sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de l'esprit."

"He had what my brother Walt used to call his Eureka Look, and he wanted to tell me that he thought he finally knew why Christ said to call no man Fool. (It was a problem that had been baffling him all week, because it sounded to him like a piece of advice, I believe, more typical of Emily Post than of someone busily about his Father's Business.) Christ had said it, Seymour thought I'd want to know, because there are no fools. Dopes, yes—fools, no."

"Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results."

"Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool - and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool. I can see too that often I changed from being one kind of fool into another kind fo fool I was happy about it because I didn't know what had happened."

"No Man is so much a Fool as not to have Wit enough sometimes to be a Knave ; nor any so cunning a Knave, as not to have the Weakness sometimes to play the Fool."

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

"How does the fool build his paradise?—out of the crumbling bricks of illusion and the watery cement of hope."

"When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool."

"Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?"

"A young man sees a terribly venomous snake in his small village. Nervous, he watches the snake carefully until it leaves.The young man follows the snake into the forest. He clears the branches out of its path and helps it over obstacles. He even works to keep it fed. Many nights pass and still the young man continues to follow the snake. He even follows it into the sands of the great desert. In the desert, the snake eventually grows hungry. It turns and bites the young man, its poison quickly working its way into his system. Finally curious, the snake looks at the boy as he lays dying and asks, "Why were you foolish enough to follow me all the way out into the desert?" The boy looks back and replies, "Did I follow you? I thought I was leading you away from everyone else..." And then he died."

"'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit."

"Taciturnitas stulto homini pro sapientia est."

"To bankrupt a fool, give him information."

"Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous."

"We learn the most from fools ... yet we pay them back with the worst ingratitude."

"Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it."

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and the angels are all in heaven, but few of the fools are dead."

"Now and then there's a fool such as I am over you You taught me how to love And now you say that we are through I'm a fool, but I'll love you dear Until the day I die Now and then there's a fool such as I."

"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right."

"The world is made up, for the most part, of fools and knaves, both irreconcilable foes to truth."

"The best way in which to silence any friend of yours whom you know to be a fool is to induce him to hire a hall. Nothing chills pretense like exposure."

"I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool."

"Be wise with speed; A fool at forty is a fool indeed."

"At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan."

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

"Face a bear robbed of her cubs,"

"Of what use is money in the hands of fools"

"As dogs return to their vomit,"

"The fool is garrulous."

"He who knows but does not speak is a fool."