"Folly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the kind offices of those about him. They had taken him there at Kate's command, and she had worn herself to a shadow with anguish, love and penitence. She watched him by day and by night—in her restless dreams; her whole existence was in the tossing victim of her folly. Every twitch of that pain-stricken body seemed to show her that he was shrinking from her in hatred. Her pretty face was white and drawn, the blue eyes dark and pitiful, the merry mouth, plaintive in ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... offer seemed left in abeyance. Colonel Brownlow had all his son's scruples, and more than his indignation at Lucas's folly in hesitating; and John was so sure that he ought not to accept the proposal, that he would not stir in the matter, nor mention it to Sydney. At last Lucas acted on his own responsibility, and had an interview with ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an answer Rossland coolly moved away. Alan did not follow. There was nothing for him to resent, nothing for him to imprecate but his own folly. Rossland's words were not an insult. They were truth. He had deliberately intruded in an affair which was undoubtedly of a highly private nature. Possibly it was a domestic tangle. He shuddered. A sense of humiliation swept over him, and he was glad ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... betook them to counsel, that a king they would have of their own race, for all Sichelm's words they held to be folly.—"And so long as is ever, it shall not ever stand! But we shall take Riculf, who is an earl exceeding powerful, and raise him to be king—this is to us pleasing—and assemble our forces over all this country, and march towards Arthur, and defeat ...
— Brut • Layamon
... that has been said against love, respecting the folly and weakness it lends a young inexperienced mind into; still I think it in a great measure deserves the highest encomiums that have been passed upon it. If anything on earth deserves the name of rapture or transport, it is the feelings of green eighteen ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... ladies, used to gambol into the cottages, overset furniture and children, and scamper out again amid a general uproar. For though Miss Mary was but sixteen, the starched spinsters decided that she was much too old for such folly; and that, if the General intended to present her at court, it was high time for her to lay aside the hoyden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... folly!' you say, some one who has never felt keenly and suddenly the pangs of such a passion unrequited. Perhaps so. But out of our great weakness sometimes grows our strength; out of our bitterest disappointments our sternest resolution. By-and-by such weakness will ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Jongleur is a sort of Physician, or rather a Quack, who being once cur'd of some dangerous Distemper, has the Presumption and Folly to fancy that he is immortal, and possessed of the Power of curing all Diseases, by speaking to the Good and Evil Spirits. Now though every Body rallies upon these Fellows when they are absent, and looks upon 'em ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... the dress of a remote civilization from which he had thrust himself forever, before the woman he perhaps had wronged, and with so easy and disdainful a bearing, seemed to Ringfield the summit of senseless folly and contemptible weakness. Subjected during the rest of the evening to the cynical, amused and imperturbable gaze of this man, whom, in spite of his Christianity, he hated, Ringfield made but a sorry chairman. His ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... sometimes wrought in a mighty fast time. Many a fast man has been known to turn over a new leaf in a single night, and forever afterwards be slow. Such a thing is dreadful to contemplate, but it has been. Many a vain woman has seen the folly of her ways at a glance, and at once gone back on them. This is not dreadful to contemplate, since to go back on folly is to go onward in wisdom. The female sex is not often guilty of this eccentricity, but instances have been known. It is that which fills ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... The folly of the nobles went even farther than this. The height of their genealogy counted for as much as its length. They would refuse to accept positions under persons whose ancestors were shown by the books to have been subordinate to theirs ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... conflict. But to ignore the fundamental cause and motive which led the South to precipitate the war, with a view to seeming not to be influenced by sectional prejudices is pushing magnanimity to the verge of vapid sentimentality—a folly in which the South, in so far as its attitude toward the Negro is concerned, ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... and no one was punished for them. Outbreaks of mob violence, though of a less riotous kind, took place in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and elsewhere. On November 1, the day on which the stamp act came into operation, copies of it were offered for sale headed, "The folly of England and the ruin of America," bells were tolled, and mock funerals passed through ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... by the forest pool and always was sad and sighing because it could not utter music like the brook and the birds and the winds. All the bright, beautiful things around it mocked it and laughed at it for its folly. Who would ever look for music in it, a plain, brown, unbeautiful thing? But one day a youth came through the wood; he was as beautiful as the spring; he cut the brown reed and fashioned it according to his liking; and then he put it to his lips and breathed on it; and, oh, the music that ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... once in my frequent use of it, I spoke the truth. The prospect of going down to Deadborough served, of course, to revive the painful memory of our humiliating defeat. Looked at in the perspective of time, our enterprise stood out in all its essential folly. But I have frequently found that the contemplation of a past mistake has a strange tendency to cause its repetition; and it was so in this case. For it suddenly occurred to me that this "harvest home" might give us an opportunity for a flank attack on the soul of Snarley Bob, whereby ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... then, turning to my grandfather: "Well, Saint-Simon tells how Maulevrier had had the audacity to offer his hand to his sons. You remember how he says of Maulevrier, 'Never did I find in that coarse bottle anything but ill-humour, boorishness, and folly.'" ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... look like one. I often visit in Montreal where I see a great many of them, and they always look poor and pale. Will you allow me to ask you a few questions?" By this time, I was wide awake, and realized perfectly where I was, and the folly of making such an imprudent disclosure. I would have given much to recall those few words, for I had a kind of presentiment that they would bring me trouble. I begged to be excused from answering any questions, as I was almost crazy with thinking of the past ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... and again dares the flame which tortures it, and at last gives its life, a sacrifice to its folly; the burned child fears the fire, and does not the second time seek the experience. So also can the efficiency of an individual or a nation, as compared with other individuals or nations, be determined. The inefficient are those who repeat the same error or ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... everything for them, and yet, in order to do as others, would sacrifice them without hesitation. To whom? Why, to the unknown god. In every epoch Abraham has led Isaac to the funeral pile. And his magnificent folly still remains an ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... destruction of all who bore one name. Still nobody suspected the true culprits, search was fruitless, inquiries led nowhere: the marquise put on mourning for her brothers, Sainte-Croix continued in his path of folly, and all things went on as before. Meanwhile Sainte-Croix had made the acquaintance of the Sieur de Saint Laurent, the same man from whom Penautier had asked for a post without success, and had made friends with him. Penautier had meanwhile become the heir of his father-in-law, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cannot tell you, how that Saviour appears to me. To bear with one so imperfect, so weak, so inconsistent, as myself, implied long suffering and patience more than words can express. I love most to look on Christ as my teacher, as one who, knowing the utmost of my sinfulness, my waywardness, my folly, can still have patience; can reform, purify, and daily make me ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... of all moral enormities and marks of degeneracy, but rather in a dependence on the animal part of human nature, in that want of freedom and independence, that want of coherence, those inconsistencies of the inward man, in which all folly and infatuation originate. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... plan of life, into which all the strength and the keen, fine feeling of their nature enter; but generally they try to make it real in early youth, and, balked then, laugh ever afterwards at their own folly. This poor old Knowles had begun to block out his dream when he was a gaunt, gray-haired man of sixty. I have known men so build their heart's blood, and brains into their work, that, when it tumbled down, their lives went with it. His fell that dull day in October; but if it hurt him, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the smaller islands, where there is a superabundance of negro population and no room for squatters, the export of sugar has not been diminished: it is true that in Jamaica and Demerara, the commercial distress is largely attributable to the folly of the planters—who doggedly refuse to accommodate themselves to the new state of things, and to entice the negroes from the back settlements by a promise of fair wages. But we have no reason to suppose that the whole tragi-comedy would not be re-enacted in the Slave States of America, if ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... indeed, art leaving me— "Me, that have despised thy friends! "Did my heart make no amends? "Thou art the love of God—above "His power, didst hear me place his love, "And that was leaving the world for thee. "Therefore thou must not turn from me "As I had chosen the other part! "Folly and pride o'ercame my heart. "Our best is bad, nor bears thy test; "Still, it should be our very best. "I thought it best that thou, the spirit, "Be worshipped in spirit and in truth, "And in beauty, as even we require it— "Not in the forms burlesque, ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... of victory. The bitter medicine of defeat, however unpalatable, is usually extremely sobering, but the strong new wine of success generally sets the heads of poor humanity spinning, and leads often to worse results than folly. The capture of Cornwallis was enough to have turned the strongest head, for the moment at least, but it had no apparent effect upon the man who had brought it to pass, and who, more than any one else, knew what it meant. Unshaken and undismayed in the New Jersey winter, and among the complicated ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Only Frank saw the movement of Bluff when he raised his rifle, and while he would have warned his chum against the folly of firing, before he could frame words to carry his meaning, the quick report came, causing a sensation among those around ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... foretold this day. I wonder have you done anything to prevent it? Let none of us presume to judge the brother who has gone. I would rather take my chances before the judgment-seat of God with him, the victim, who has paid for his folly with his life, than with any one of you who have made this thing possible. 'Ye who are strong ought to bear the infirmity of the weak.' I do not know how it will be with this man when he comes to give an account of himself ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... be denied, and would have looked around had that not been a cardinal sin in Coniston. No Jethro! General opinion (had she waited to hear it among the horse sheds or on the green), that Jethro's soul had slid back into the murky regions, from which it were folly for even Cynthia to try to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Marmaduke cursed himself and his folly for having made this arrangement. He had not known—when he made it—that Richard would be back at Acol then. Adam the smith, never came home before eight o'clock and the old Quakeress herself would not have been much in ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Wunderkind amongst nations, that we generally forget the Germany we know, the Germany still there for our affection and delight, the dear country of quaint fancies, of music and of poetry. That Germany has vanished, the wiseacres say, the dreamy unworldly German is no more with us, it is sheer sentimental folly to believe in him and to waste your time looking for him. But how if you know him everywhere, in the music and poetry that he could not have given us if they had not burned within him, and in the men and women who have accompanied you as friends throughout life,—how if you still find him ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... of Enosh were thus the first idol worshippers, and the punishment for their folly was not delayed long. God caused the sea to transgress its bounds, and a portion of the earth was flooded. This was the time also when the mountains became rocks, and the dead bodies of men began to decay. And still another consequence of the sin of idolatry ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... of instilling right principles into the mind, from the first dawn of reason, cannot be too strongly enforced. Many a wretched midnight burglar commenced his career of vice and folly by stealing fruit, followed by thieving anything that he could HANDSOMELY. Pilfering, unless severely checked, is a hotbed for the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lover, pause for breath! Folly may here mean death! Yon gleam the lights of the capital's towers; Here let thy pace be slow; Frederick, thy crafty foe, Plots there to lay thee low, Fearing thy powers; He of the "empty purse", Stung by thy biting verse, Using a woman's hate, ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... cannot bring to mind His features:—Lycius! wherefore did you blind Yourself from his quick eyes?" Lycius replied, "'Tis Apollonius sage, my trusty guide And good instructor; but to-night he seems The ghost of folly haunting ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... visit to his house—told, as I thought, to hide their failure under a veil of lies—was true? If so, then he has passed the threshold and taken a place only a little lower than the seats of the gods, a place that I may not approach, barred by the penalty of my accursed folly and pride! Ah well, be it so or be it not, are not the fates of all men in the hands of the High Gods who see all things? We see but a little, and that little, with their help, we must do according to the faith and the hope ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... century. And in the celebrated Passion Play, at Oberammergau, in Bavaria, we have an instance of a miracle play that has survived to our own day. These were followed by the moral plays, in which allegorical characters, such as Clergy, Lusty Juventus, Riches, Folly, and Good Demeanaunce, were the persons of the drama. The comic character in the miracle plays had been the Devil, and he was retained in some of the moralities side by side with the abstract vice, who became the clown or fool of Shaksperian ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a soul-spirited knave, and his ever victim's outcry for ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... retreated. One of the gentlemen in company made the following remarks, on his leaving us: 'In the conduct of Gonzalo appears a strange mixture of intellectual strength and intellectual debility; of wit and dulness; of wisdom and folly; and all this arises chiefly from his mistaking the means for the end—the instrument of achieving for the object achieved. The fondest wish of his heart is literary fame: for this he would sacrifice every thing. He is handsome, generous, an affectionate son, a merry companion, and ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to be torn apart. But I know she and I will never meet again. That I know as surely as that the sun will rise, and that cascade come shining over the rocks after I am dead and done.... Oh! It's all foolishness and haste and violence and cruel folly, stupidity and blundering hate and selfish ambition—all the things that men have done—all the things they will ever do. Gott! Smallways, what a muddle and confusion life has always been—the battles and massacres ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... shipwrecked men to reach the shore? There is no inconsistency in giving up an intention which we have discovered to be wrong and have condemned as wrong; we ought candidly to admit, "I thought that it was something different; I have been deceived." It is mere pride and folly to persist, "what I once have said, be it what it may, shall remain unaltered and settled." There is no disgrace in altering one's plans according to circumstances. Now, if Philip had left this man in possession of that seashore which he obtained by his shipwreck, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... of Comte was insufficient, the folly of Comte was wisdom. In an age of dusty modernity, when beauty was thought of as something barbaric and ugliness as something sensible, he alone saw that men must always have the sacredness of mummery. He saw that while ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... needless blurting out of confidences to a cabman was the one folly essential to a complete restoration of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... one night, for two nights, and for three nights, may be observed by them. (They should never go beyond three nights). As regards Vaisyas and Sudras, the duration of fasts prescribed for them is a single night. If, from folly, they observe fasts for two or three nights, such fasts never lead to their advancement. Indeed, for Vaisyas and Sudras, fasts for two nights have been ordained (on certain special occasions). Fasts for three nights, however, have not been laid ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... considered if their tale be likely; which hath been highly provided lest heretics without jeopardy might else plant their heresies in lewd and light persons, and taking exception to the witnesses, take boldness to continue their folly. This is the universal law of Christendom, and hath universally done good. Of any injury done to any ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... introduction was unnecessary in this instance; for Captain Truck no sooner saw his visitor than he recognized the well-known features and solemn pomposity of a civil officer of Portsmouth, who was often employed to search the American packets, in pursuit of delinquents of all degrees of crime and folly. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... book-writing, of which more presently; became the inspirer, model and butt of Blackwood's Magazine; constantly threatened to quarrel with it for traducing him, and once did so; loved Edinburgh convivialities more well than wisely; had the very ill luck to survive Scott and to commit the folly of writing a pamphlet (more silly than anything else) on the "domestic manners" of that great man, which estranged Lockhart, hitherto his fast friend; paid a visit to London in 1832, whereby hang tales; and died himself ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... dogmas, and devoid of comprehensive ideas and true magnanimity, fail to recognize and delight in depreciating qualities with which they have no affinity, and whose legitimate functions they ignore or pervert—for 'Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.' With all due allowance for honest differences of opinion as to political or religious creeds, for diversities of taste and education, there yet remains to the truly humane, wise, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... with time pressing us now, no. If we keep straight on, we could reach the foothills in about forty hours, maybe less. And we have to stay with the river. To strike across country there without good supplies and on foot is sheer folly." ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... a muscle in his face. He was courteous, even patient with Fitz, now really alarmed over the consequences of what he considered a most stupendous piece of folly. He could not, he said, sit in judgment on other gentlemen. If Fitz felt that way, it was doubtless due to his education. As for himself, he must follow the traditions of ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of the banquet; feeling that when life is worthless it is folly to live, you cannot shrink from the lofty resolution by which we are bound, you cannot pause on our joyful journey of departure from the scenes of earth—I wrong you even by a doubt! Let me now, rather, ask your attention for a worthier subject—the enumeration of the festal ceremonies ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... antecedents, and whom they despised in their hearts as low-born robbers. Even Barbarossa, acknowledged by all to be the greatest seaman in the Turkish Empire, could not enforce strict obedience in the campaign of Prevesa in 1538. The Grand Vizier Ibrahim had seen the folly of putting generals in command of fleets, and had therefore secured the promotion of Barbarossa: but Ibrahim was now dead, and Solyman, bereft of his wise counsel, ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... of the ships seemed to confirm their hopes. On the 10th the journal records that the men began to lose patience; but the Admiral reassured them by reminding them of the profits in store for them, and of the folly of seeking to return when they ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... hour together, in spite of all her father could say to her (what were her motives, was best known to herself!) and while we were talking of her, she came bounding into the room, smiling with smothered delight at the consummation of my folly and her own art; and I asked her mother whether she thought she looked as if she hated me, and I took her wrinkled, withered, cadaverous, clammy hand at parting, ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... his way, I fancy! Stuff and nonsense, bo'sun; how can you believe such rubbish? The other night you imagined the reflection of our own vessel, when that meteor came by, to be a ghost-ship, as you call it in your absurd folly; and to-night, when that craft to win'rd passed and lit a flare-up, hanged if you aren't at it again with your ghost-ship! By George, it makes me sick, Masters, to think that a grown man and a good seaman like yourself should be ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... framing constitutions, providing laws, and filling offices with the abilities of their ablest men. These, if the great whole is mismanaged, must sink in the general wreck, which will carry with it the remorse of thinking that we are lost by our own folly and negligence or by the desire, perhaps, of living in ease and tranquility during the accomplishment of so great a revolution, in the effecting of which the greatest abilities and the most honest men our American world affords ought ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Wind and the Sun! How each loved the other one Full of fancy—- full folly— Full of jollity and fun! How they romped and ran about, Like two boys when school is out, With glowing face, and lisping lip, Low laugh, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... strange that from you should come sympathy and comfort!—you whom he so injured; you whom his folly or his crime drove from your proud career, and your native soil! But Providence will yet, I trust, redeem the evil of its erring creature, and I shall yet live to see you restored to hope and home, a happy husband, an honoured citizen. Till then, I feel as if the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a barrier is seen as in the cases of Oberlin and Berea, where coeducation of the races did not lead to intermarriage. The author refers to the efforts of some States outside of the South attempting to check miscegenation by statute, but shows the folly of such legislation in proving that in general where intermarriage of the races is still permitted very little occurs. Referring to the statutes of the States prohibiting marriage between the whites and the blacks (III, 38), he says: "The necessity for such legislation calls in question ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... faith in God's laws of growth. If we be but faithful, furnishing the soil, the seed, the nurture, we must wait for the increase. Many factors which we cannot control will determine whether it shall be early or late and what form it shall take. We must wait. It is high folly that pulls up the sprouting grain to see ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... of the company, "that a woman of the countess's age and appearance can be guilty of such folly. No, no; you mistake the aim of this detestable woman. She is managing to get possession of the estate ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... most distressing weaknesses, but with all his dullness, and lacking the halo of legend and the splendour of the founder of the race to glorify him. Paulus has the merit of true courage, and his consciousness of his colleague's folly invests him with a certain pathos. He makes the best death of any Silian warrior, and deserves the eulogy passed on him by Hannibal. The rest are lay-figures, with even less individuality and life. Silius ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... that poor young counter-jumper, my dear," said the Count, advancing hastily to meet Emilie. "Do you not know how to hold your horse in?—And there you leave me to compromise my dignity in order to screen your folly; whereas if you had but stopped, one of your looks, or one of your pretty speeches—one of those you can make so prettily when you are not pert—would have set everything right, even if you had ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... "The folly of these new governors!" Menard strode back and forth. "Oh, it makes one sigh for old Frontenac. He never walked blindfolded into such a trap as this. But go on. You were speaking of ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... and Keeper of the Royal Castle of Hermitage. Sir Ralph Sadler, on the 5th of May that year, says of him, "As to the Earl of Bothwell, who, as ye know, hath the rule of Liddersdale, I think him the most vain and insolent man in the world, full of pride and folly, and here, I assure you, nothing at all esteemed."—(Sadler's Papers, vol. i. p. 184.) At the time of Wishart's apprehension, he was High Sheriff of the county of Haddington. In Douglas and Wood's Peerage of Scotland, (vol. i. pp. 227-229,) ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... pushing his latest-born away and running his fingers through his hair, as he resumed his tranquil face. 'What folly is this! Let us take heed how we laugh without reason lest we cry with it. What is the domestic news since yesterday? John Westlock is ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... for lighter diversions of the Bar. Keenly as Madison felt his defection, he was too much preoccupied with other things to lay much stress upon it, and the sting of Arthur's relapse to worldliness and folly lay in his own consciousness that it was partly his fault. He could not chide his brother when he felt that his own heart was absorbed in his neighbor's wife, and although he had rigidly adhered to his own crude ideas of self-effacement and loyalty to McGee, he had been again and ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... it was as real as anything could be.—What? It must be fancy, or you would have run to his side and spoken? It would have been fancy if you had. Madness! Folly! Bedlam-ish lunacy. Why, you would have spoiled everything. Poor old Hal—poor old Hal! Thank Heaven! ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... terrible war must be touched by this moving appeal of His Holiness the Pope, must feel the dignity and force of the humane and generous motives which prompted it, and must fervently wish that we might take the path of peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes. Our response must be based upon the stern facts and upon nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he desires: it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not be gone through with again, and it must be a matter of very ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... the labour of this country to the most profitless ends. Roads, which are now more than ever necessary to be kept in order, are in the course of obstruction, whilst waterlogged lands, reclaimable bottoms, and mountain slopes stand out in damning evidence of the indolence, neglect, and folly of man."—Letter of Lieut.-Colonel Douglas to Sir S. Routh, dated Clonmel, 28th January, 1847. Commissariat Series, part 2. Strong language from ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... afraid," said Verbitzsky. "Why should I die for your reckless folly? Will any good happen if you explode the bombs here? You will but destroy all of us, and our friends the watchmen, and the freight-sheds containing the property of ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... the folly and weakness of the "rhyming cranks," as he called them. He thought the fellow that I had described as blubbering over his still-born poems would have been better occupied in earning his living in some honest way or other. He knew one chap that published ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... can say is that they will be sorry before they are done. I wish they would read Aesop's fable about the old man and his sons and the bundle of rods. I wish they would find out definitely why God gave them tongues and lips and ears. I wish they would take to heart the folly of this constant struggle in which they live, against the whole law of the being of a gregarious animal like man. What is it that Westerly writes me, whose note comes to me from the mail just as I finish this paper? "I do not look for much advance in the world until we can get people out of their ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... a noble composition, grandly conceived and admirably expressed. It begins with some grave reflections on the "folly and nothingness of all things human" as exemplified by the death of a king. It goes on to enforce on the young Queen the paramount duties of educating her people, avoiding war, and cultivating personal religion. It concludes with the following ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... context. The whole verse before us treats of the endowments of the King; the whole succeeding one, of the prosperity which, by these endowments, is imparted to the people. To this may still be added the evident contrast to the folly of the former shepherds, which was the consequence of their wickedness, and which, in the preceding chapter, had been described as the cause of their own, and the people's destruction; compare chap. x. 21: "For the shepherds are become brutish, and do not seek the Lord; therefore they do not act ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... concurrence of Francisco do Monclaros, a Jesuit, which was the cause of the failure of this enterprise. It was a great error to subject a soldier to the authority of a priest, and a most presumptuous folly in the priest to undertake a commission so foreign to his profession. There were two roads to the mines, one of which was through the dominions of Monomotapa, and the other by way of Sofala. Barreto was disposed to have taken the latter, but Monclaros ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Fink; "that's all right. If you ever set pen to paper again on their behalf, it can only be from a sense of compassion. Another point is that Rothsattel has brought a curse upon himself by his folly, for without you things can't go on as they do for another month. Now, then, Master Anton, comes the question, What will be ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... the gaze that met his was confusingly unstirred by any shade of suitable timidity or emotion. There was something in the lovely, sedate little creature, something so undisturbed and matter of fact, that it frightened him, because he suddenly felt like a fool whose folly had been ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "What folly, boy! A young girl who cannot know her own mind! And for such a bit of romantic trifling you would ruin yourself. It ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that eighteen thousand unoffending persons should be stripped of all that they possessed, and cast out to the mercy of the wilderness. The atrocity of the plan is matched by its folly. The king gave explicit orders, but he gave neither ships nor men enough to accomplish them; and the Dutch farmers, goaded to desperation, would have cut his sixteen hundred soldiers to pieces. It was the scheme of a man blinded by a long ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... asking about Hinduism, "Surely if the idolatry, and folly, and indecency, which we know exists in the religion as it now is could be cleared away, we should find remaining some deep philosophic thoughts and mystical poetical fancies ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... Paul's antecedents. His mother never spoke, and before she was brought home in her present state, by Professor Cutter, there had been hardly any communication between her and her sisters since her marriage. Time had effaced the remembrance of what they had called her folly when she married Patoff, but the breach had never been healed. Mrs. Carvel had made one or two efforts at reconciliation, but they had been coldly received; she was a timid woman, and soon gave up the attempt. It was not till poor Madame Patoff was brought home hopelessly insane, and Macaulay ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... to the great scandal of Lucius, who longed for better knowledge of the Gothic tongue to convince the old man of the folly of his heathen dreams. Meinhard, who was likewise rather shocked, explained that the father and son had been recent arrivals, who had been baptized because Euric required his followers to embrace his faith, but with little real knowledge or acceptance on the part of the father. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it. If she were not better when he returned it would be well for him to seek some excuse to sleep at the inn, for her appearance in the corner frightened him; and standing by the window, looking into the quiet evening, he railed against his folly. Any one but himself would have guessed that there was some grave reason for her life in the convent. Such an end as this to the evening that had begun so well! "My God, what am I to do!" And, turning impulsively, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... pained hush, such as naturally occurs when someone has made a very horrible faux pas. They all looked at one another awkwardly; while Mary, ashamed at her mother's want of taste, kept her eyes glued to the carpet But Mrs. Clibborn's folly was so notorious that presently anger was succeeded by contemptuous amusement, and the curate came to the rescue ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... the self-restraint and meditative attitude, are pleasant to the reader after the turbid utterances and twisted language of Carlyle; we may compare the stirring rebellious spirit brooding over the folly of mankind with the man who takes humanity as he finds it, and is content to make the best of a world in which he sees not much, beyond art and nature and a few old friends, to interest him. Upon the whole, we may place Carlyle and FitzGerald, each in his very different manner, at the head of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the Prince of Priests. Voluptuousness, ambition, superstition, each in their turn, had the ascendant in this extraordinary character. Such, however, is the dazzling nature of personal bravery and of prosperity, that even the ignorance and folly of the bigot, and the barbarities of the persecutor, are lost or forgotten amidst the enterprises of the hero and the successes of the conqueror. Reason and justice lift (p. 324) up their voice in vain. The great and ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... up and down for about one hour. He made no speech like the night before. He just walked and walked. The part that struck me was that neither of them had ever seemed to have the slightest notion of pleading old Angus out of his mad folly. They both seemed to know the Scotch when ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... our extra military effort by cutting economic assistance. But at the very time when the economic threat is assuming menacing proportions, to fail to strengthen our own effort would be nothing less than reckless folly! ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of the bird, the wild hive was left for that occasion, it being a pity to waste any of the honey, so they returned by another route towards the camp, the bird twittering and showing no little excitement at what it evidently looked upon as the folly of men ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... mistake, my Lord; surely it must be the height of folly to lift my thoughts to Miss Warley. Suppose my father can give me a few thousands,—are these sufficient to purchase beauty, good sense, with every accomplishment?—No, no, my Lord, I am not such a vain fellow;—Miss Warley was never born for Edmund Jenkings—She told me so, the first ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... army of the nabob approached. Captain Minchin took his guns and troops a considerable distance beyond the walls, and opened fire upon the enemy. Charlie, enraged and disgusted at the folly of conduct which could only lead to defeat, marched with them as a ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... repeat his words I wonder at my pertinacious folly; I hardly know what feelings resis[t]lessly impelled me. I believe it was that coming out with a determination not to be repulsed I went right forward to my object without well weighing his replies: I was led by passion and drew him with frantic heedlessness ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... parley with the enemy. They were quite willing to surrender in less than twenty minutes, provided that one strange stipulation should be conceded, viz: that the bridge would not be burned. While Bowles was endeavoring to prove to them the folly of such a proposition, the twenty minutes expired. Hutchinson, who was very literal in observing all that he said, immediately caused his artillery to open without waiting for the return of his envoy, and two shells were bursted ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... rather yellow in the face perhaps, but still there was about him a certain indefinable air of distinction which most men she knew lacked. There were girls who might even call him handsome. As she thought of that, her mouth hardened momentarily. She must guard against any folly of that sort by not introducing him in dangerous quarters until he was in a very much better position financially. The last thought suggested a question she had been intending to ask him at ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... all, in a public and political view, is this extraordinary increase of crime in our manufacturing districts, a subject of serious and anxious consideration to all classes in the state. It is in vain to seek to conceal, it is folly to attempt to deny, that in the dense masses of the manufacturers the real danger of Great Britain is to be found. Though not amounting, upon the whole, to more than a tenth part of the nation, they are incomparably ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the folly," her father said, smiling; "but let us be wiser for the future. They have already retired to their own quarters, and you will see no more of them for the present. My ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... because a person does a thing in the dark it will never be brought to light, is fatal—God says it shall be brought to light. It is folly for a man who has covered his sins to think there shall be no resurrection of them and no final adjudication. Look at the sons of Jacob. They sold Joseph and deceived their father. Twenty long years rolled away, and away ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... of art; in the next place, I seemed, in comparison with them, to be old in my opinions and my habits. They called themselves Republicans, for instance, whereas Republicanism in Denmark had in my eyes hitherto been mere youthful folly. Then again, they were very unconventional in their habits. After a party near Christmas time, which was distinguished by a pretty song by Julius Lange, they proposed—at twelve o'clock at night!—that we should go to Frederiksborg. And ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... was now approaching when superstition, and folly, and vice, were to be relieved from the satiric pencil which had awed them so long—the health of Hogarth began to decline. He was aware of this, and purchased a small house at Chiswick, to which he retired during the summer, amusing himself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... merely murmured: "We ought to be on guard to-night, lest Jeb commit some folly. Better watch him, Polly, and see where ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... ancestor, I must begin, and lay the blame upon a woman; I am glad to recognize that I differ from the father of my sex in no important particular, being as manlike as most of his sons. Therefore it is the woman, my Aunt Carola, who must bear the whole reproach of the folly which I shall forthwith confess to you, since she it was who put it into my head; and, as it was only to make Eve happy that her husband ever consented to eat the disastrous apple, so I, save to please my relative, had never aspired to become a Selected Salic Scion. I rejoice now that I did so, ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... a good woman might have had an excellent influence on him. As he had no home of his own, his time when in port was spent at some miserable tavern by the water-side, where he could meet the crews of vessels from all quarters of the world, and join with them in folly and vice. ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... personal disgrace; if this shall happen, the people of this kingdom may be assured that they cannot be firmly or faithfully served by any man. It is out of the nature of men and things that they should; and their presumption will be equal to their folly, if they expect it. The power of the people, within the laws, must show itself sufficient to protect every representative in the animated performance of his duty, or that duty cannot be performed. The House ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... on here. The authorities would justly put a very bad construction upon such ill-timed amiability, and I should not like to obliterate the good impression which the success of the expedition to Simla has made upon my superiors by an unpardonable act of folly on my ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... said, "will you sit down again? I will deliver you a discourse upon the extreme folly of ever telling"—he hesitated—"of saying anything which is not ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... people hang together solidly; a man with even a trace of red blood will rarely admit a white man into the secrets of the race. Under questioning they maintain a bland front that it is almost impossible to break down. Stonor had long ago learned the folly of trying to get at what ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... fool in his folly anticipate sorrow, I, for one, will refuse to take thought for the morrow. There is joy in our life if we will but enjoy it; But the most of us do what ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats |
