"Follies" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that we have not the courage to condemn anything at all. We think of the way in which Browning was once taunted for his obscurity, and we cannot find it in our hearts to censure Mr. Doughty. We recall the ignorant attacks on Manet and Monet, and we will not risk an onslaught on the follies of Picasso and the worse-than-Picassos of contemporary art. We grow a monstrous and unhealthy plant of tolerance in our souls, and its branches drop colourless good words on the just and on the unjust—on everybody, indeed, except Miss Marie Corelli, Mr. Hall ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Because she was there? Who? She, a little unknown English girl? I did not love her, I did not even know her. And for all that, I was touched and conquered. I wanted to save her, to sacrifice myself for her, to commit a thousand follies! Strange thing! How does it happen that the presence of a woman overwhelms us so? Is it the power of her grace which enfolds us? Is it the seduction of her beauty and youth, which ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... very glad to have you keep me in countenance. We will discourse cynically upon the follies of the day and ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... sin there? nothing but hell-scars? Or is it because there is something better — A glimmer of good, maybe — or a shadow Of something that's followed me down from childhood — Followed me all these years and kept me, Spite of my slips and sins and follies, Spite of my last red sin, my murder, — Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind? And you smile for that? You're a good man, Dominie, The one good man in the world who knows me, — My one good friend ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... sword, in order to compel his companions to descend. Then arose between the court and himself a continual struggle of boldness on the one hand and slander on the other. The king treated him, however, with the indulgence which virtue testifies for youth's follies. The Comte d'Artois took him as the constant companion of his pleasures. The queen, who liked the Comte d'Artois, feared for him the contagion of the disorders and amours of the Duc d'Orleans. She hated equally in this young prince the favourite of the people ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... a cold, caught by going rather thinly dressed to a fashionable party too soon after the birth of Emily; and my son, having become the pet and spoiled child of his mother and her relatives, soon became imbued with fashionable follies, which, despite of all my care and vigilance, I am grieved to say, have degenerated into worse and more indefensible principles. He had not reached the period of manhood when he altogether threw off all regard for my control over him as a father, and led a life since of which the less that is said ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... "Some boyish follies abroad, I believe; self-made men are always impatient of extravagance. But it is hard upon Frere. He is not a bad sort of fellow for all his roughness, and when a young man finds that an accident deprives him of a quarter ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... possibly arise from the natural temper of the heart. And what shall we say of a government that avowedly steps forward, with the insolence of an open enemy, and creates a new vice, for the sake of loading it with a tax? What right has such a government to punish our follies? And who can look without disgust on the impious figure it makes, in holding the scourge in one hand, and the temptation in the other? You cannot hesitate to declare, in your constitution, THAT ALL LOTTERIES SHALL ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... busy crowd, From the gay haunts where pleasure is ador'd, 'Mid the hot sick'ning glare of pomp and light; And fashion worshipp'd by a gaudy throng Of heartless idlers—from the jarring world And all its passions, follies, cares, and crimes— And bids us gaze, even in the city's heart, On such a scene as this! O fairest spot! If but the pictured semblance, the dead image Of thy majestic beauty, hath a power To wake such deep delight; if that blue lake, Over whose lifeless breast ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... the examples set before her in her early life; since the privileges and advantages which the young enjoy in their early years, and, on the other hand, the evil influences under which they suffer, are to be taken very seriously into the account when we are passing judgment upon the follies and sins into which ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... celebrated Rosalba in portrait painting, both in miniature and at large, in oil as well as in crayons. The genius of Cervantes was transfused into the novels of Fielding, who painted the characters, and ridiculed the follies of life, with equal strength, humour, and propriety. The field of history and biography was cultivated by many writers of ability: among whom we distinguish the copious Guthrie, the circumstantial Ralph, the laborious ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... so recently been the scene of her false splendour and her follies, the Rootmen happened on this very day to be assembled. Notwithstanding her wrong conduct, they had not yet given up the Princess, and, at the entreaties of her father, they were met to consider what steps could be taken ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... going to trust you. My father was very angry with me about some little follies of mine, and he told me the other night he had left a good slice of the estate away from me. Do you think that packet you put in the coffin had ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... and the John Brodricks, Dr. Henry Brodrick and Mrs. Heron. But for the presence of the novelist, the birthday dinner was indistinguishable, from any family festival of Brodricks. Solemn it was and ceremonial, yet intimate, relieved by the minute absurdities, the tender follies of people who were, as Tanqueray owned, incomparably untainted. It was Jinny's great merit, after all, that she had not married a man who had the taint. The marvel was how the editor had contrived to carry intact that ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... rouge-pot, held it towards me with his melancholy smile. He was very red in the face; but that may have been either anger or the effect of sudden stooping. "I see you are surprised at these masquerading follies," he said in a tone which, though low, was perfectly calm. "You must not suppose that I beautify my sallow cheeks ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... abundant fodder. In truth, Pitt had not that gift without which the highest abilities and the most strenuous endeavours will at novel crises be at fault—a sympathetic insight into the needs and aspirations of the people. His analytical powers enabled him to detect the follies of the royalist crusaders; but he lacked those higher powers of synthesis which alone could discern ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... becommeth blacke, and is there in great aboundance, so that it is the right Pepper countrey; for when we came thither they said vnto vs, Aqui ai tanta Pimienta, como terra, that is, here is as much Pepper as earth, and so we found it, and yet we departed from thence by our owne follies, without our lading of Pepper: Wee staide for new Pepper, meane time the Portingalles sent their letters into euery place seeking to hinder our trade: At the first we might haue sufficient, for there we founde enough both ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... came up with me next day, I threw myself into his arms, vowing to avoid such follies and to be more ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... well as written, are largely sympathetic. We are bitter against the press; and surely it needs a greater Luther for its reformer. But its follies are ours; its corruptions belong to its patrons. The editor of a paper edits the mind of those that take it. He cannot help being in a sort of close communion. Perhaps he mainly borrows the very indignation, not so very pure and independent, with which he reproves some ingenuous satirist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... to behold a literature like that which has sculptured with so much energy of expression, which has painted so faithfully and vividly, the crimes, the vices, the follies of ancient and modern Europe;—if we desire that our land should furnish for the orator and the novelist, for the painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and romantic scenery of war; the glittering ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... unveil'd each horrid crime appears, Her awful hand a cup of wormwood bears. Days, years mispent, O what a hell of woe! Hers the worst tortures that our souls can know. Now eighteen years their destin'd course have run, In fast succession round the central sun. How did the follies of that period pass Unnotic'd, but behold them writ in brass! In Recollection see them fresh return, And sure 'tis mine to be asham'd, and mourn. O Virtue, smiling in immortal green, Do thou exert thy pow'r, and change the scene; Be thine employ to guide my future days, And mine to pay the tribute ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... he could smile at their foibles, in dressing their hair so that they could not wear a hat, but were compelled to carry it under their arms; also in filling their noses with tobacco. "These," said he, "are mere follies. There is nothing wanting, in the character of a Frenchman, that belongs to that of ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... in being across the frontier at such a time. Had I not been fool enough to trust those who to-day have proved themselves utterly unworthy of trust, that is where I should be myself. My remaining in Paris is the crowning folly of a life full of follies and mistakes. That I should come to you in my hour of most urgent need adds point to it." ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... greatest fool of all, who might have had every thing—mon Dieu! yes, every thing—she would have given it all to him with a sweep of her hand if he would have taken it. He is to marry himself to a little brown girl who has not a shilling. No one but an Englishman could make follies so abominable as these. Ah! I am sick—I am sick when I remember it!" And Sophie gave unmistakable signs of a grief which could hardly have been self interested. But, in truth, she suffered pain in seeing ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... strictures of other pens, I shall confine my remarks to only a few parts thereof. All that you have said might have been comprised in half the compass. It is tedious and unmeaning, and only a repetition of your former follies, with here and there an offensive aggravation. Your cargo of pardons will have no market. It is unfashionable to look at them—even speculation is at an end. They have become a perfect drug, and no way ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... over, "no doubt it is a very fine thing when one can say that he is his own master, nor is it so difficult to attain to such a position after all. All that is wanted is a strength of character always true to itself. But you, my friend, have committed follies which might easily make ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... him into an especially difficult position. Whenever he brings from his psychological studies arguments which point to the errors in public prejudices, he can present his facts in full array. Nothing hinders him from speaking with earnestness against the follies of hasty and short-sighted methods in every concern of public life, if he has the courage to oppose the fancies of the day. But the fight in favour of the policy of silence is different. If he begins to shout his arguments, he himself breaks that role of ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... he was sure to be the younger hand, and therefore lost it. Again he stormed. "Did not I tell you so?" said Matta, starting out of his sleep. "All your storming is in vain; as long as you play you will lose. Believe me, the shortest follies are the best. Leave off, for the devil take me if it is possible for you to win." "Why?" said Cameran, who began to be impatient. "Do you wish to know?" said Matta; "why, faith, it is ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... unseemly fashion jostling great. He wondered concerning those first steps of the disembodied spirit, when it has crossed the threshold of death; and then, incontinently, he passed to certain time-honoured jokes and impertinent follies at Eton, over which he, and Roger and Major St. Quentin had laughed a hundred times. They amused him greatly even yet. But he could not linger with them. He was troubled about the attics of the new lodge, now in building at the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... discovered, by degrees, that many people looked strangely upon her—that others seemed afraid of her—and she continually heard that she was considered "eccentric." So she became more reserved—even cold,—she was content to let others argue about trifles, and air their whims and follies without offering ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren tree; because his desires could effect all things, so that it was enough that any spot in earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and he forthwith thought of nothing else. If it were allowable to compare such great things with social follies, Castanier's position was not unlike that of a banker who, finding that his all-powerful millions cannot obtain for him an entrance into the society of the noblesse, must set his heart upon entering that circle, ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... and its re-issue as the ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of mine has almost entirely escaped the critical lash, and has pursued its way as a chartered libertine. People buy it and read it, and its faults and follies are forgiven as the exuberances of a pen unchastened by experience; but faster and more facile at that initial stage than it ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... of how the two, he and Oak, had planned and risked together, of their boyish follies and failures and successes, and of how, in later years, Oak had often helped him, of how he had saved Oak's life once in the river swamp, where quicksands were, of how Oak had now offset even that debt by carrying ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... to trace its citizenship to any certain writer. There are some living who knew the Bohemians and even loved them, but there are increasingly few who were of them, even in the fond retrospect of youthful follies and errors. It was in fact but a sickly colony, transplanted from the mother asphalt of Paris, and never really striking root in the pavements of New York; it was a colony of ideas, of theories, which had perhaps ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... indignant champion of an innocent man. And his task over, truth and justice vindicated, he asks no reward, no office; he simply desires to take up his pen once more and revert to his life work:—The delineation and exposure of the crimes, follies, and short-comings of society as now constituted, in order that those who are in politics, who control human affairs, may, in full knowledge of existing evils, do their utmost to remedy them and prepare the way for a ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... nature-myth, it was suggested by Night. But the question I tried to answer was, 'Why did the Greeks, of all people, tell such a disgusting story?' And I replied, with Professor Tiele's approval, that they inherited it from an age to which such follies were natural, an age when the ancestors of the Greeks were on (or under) the Maori stage of culture. Now, the Maoris, a noble race, with poems of great beauty and speculative power, were cannibals, like Cronos. To my mind, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... appreciated in Leipzig until she had been admired in Paris; nor Marie Wieck, because she does not play exactly as her sister Clara does. The same is the case with my present book, which relentlessly treads upon the incredible follies and lamentable errors of the times. I am quite prepared for opposition of ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... ridicule of the follies and weaknesses of mankind, by way of rebuke, is called satire. Satire is general rather than individual, its object being the reformation of abuses. A lampoon, which has been defined as a personal satire, attacks the individual rather than ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... Juliana had learned to consider it as a mere nominal thing; while, on the other hand, her husband, from seeing too much of it, had formed almost equally erroneous ideas of its powers. By the mistake kindness of General Cameron he had been indulged in all the fashionable follies of the day, and allowed to use his patron's ample fortune as if it had already been his own; nor was it until he found himself a prisoner at Glenfern from want of money that he had ever attached the smallest importance to it. In short, both ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... left her this brief ecstasy was succeeded by regrets on account of the years he had wasted in follies and intrigues. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... to them, and, in default of its master, became a centre of excited interest. It was an old creature, with a settled look of age, and a gravity of expression that seemed to say he had got over the follies of youth, and was now reserved and determined to keep the peace. His back was curved in as if a cart-wheel had gone over his spine, he had gigantic ears, a stump of a tail, a coat thin and prickly like the bristles of a pig, but white and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... having left them to the care of the dogs, was himself stretched under the shade of a rock a little way apart, and the princess sat knitting, with Prince at her feet, lying in wait for a snap at a great fly, for even he had his follies—Rosamond saw a poor woman come toiling up the hill, but took little notice of her until she was passing, a few yards off, when she heard her utter the dog's name ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... (common packthread will do; he don't care for twist) to Mr. Hood's, his quondam master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion, or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound, or not, Mr. H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and if you hinted anything, ten to one he would not hear you. Besides, you will have discharged your conscience, and laid the child at the right door, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... his jovial party, he retired to his chamber to his beloved, and bolted the door. He found her engaged with the writings of the Evangelists, and terribly demure. The laird went up to caress her; but she turned away her head, and spoke of the follies of aged men, and something of the broad way that leadeth to destruction. The laird did not thoroughly comprehend this allusion; but being considerably flustered by drinking, and disposed to take all in good part, he only remarked, as he took off his shoes and ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... (though not perhaps to be wondered at) that the follies of three—or four and twenty should be remembered against a man of thirty, who has abstained during the interval from giving the least cause of offence. There are few men of any rank in letters who have not ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... have a free choice in the matter and whose fortunes are not at stake, war is the greatest of follies. But if the only choice was between submission with loss of independence, and danger with the hope of preserving that independence, in such a case it is he who will not accept the risk that deserves blame, not he who will. ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... immediately, by a decree of the senate, declared him his colleague and successor in the empire. [36] It is sincerely to be lamented, that whilst we are fatigued with the disgustful relation of Nero's crimes and follies, we are reduced to collect the actions of Trajan from the glimmerings of an abridgment, or the doubtful light of a panegyric. There remains, however, one panegyric far removed beyond the suspicion of flattery. Above two hundred and fifty years after the death of Trajan, the senate, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... young, a single man, And after youthful follies ran, Though little given to care and thought, Yet, so it was, an ewe [3] I bought; And other sheep from her I raised, 25 As healthy sheep as you might see; And then I married, and was rich As I could wish to be; Of sheep I numbered a full ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... left vacant by MM. de Chateaubriand and Vatout. This strange alliance, I do not say of names, but of words,—"replace MM. de Chateaubriand and Vatout,"—did not stop it for one minute. The Academy is thus made; its wit and that wisdom which produces so many follies, are composed of extreme lightness combined with extreme heaviness. Hence a good deal of foolishness and ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Gilbert devoted himself to Genevieve, though more than one of the others tried to attract him, playing off the follies of more advanced girlhood, to the vexation of Albinia, who could not bear to see him the centre of attention to silly girls, when he ought to have been finding ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... between them and crossed hands in front of her, like skaters. The fresh snow-filled air blew into their lungs, and they laughed like boys on a holiday. Claire glanced at the two and thought: "What a pair to be between!" Then laughed again. All the morbidity was gone, she was not thinking follies now, and neither of them was more than a good friend. Philip was thinking that Claire was good to see as she moved along between them, her graceful stroke carrying her over the snow, her cheeks stung red in the wind. Lawrence ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... an enlightened minister in the world who will seriously contend that Sampson's strength was in his hair, or that the necromancers of Egypt could turn water into blood, and pieces of wood into serpents. These follies have passed away, and the only reason that the religious world can now have for disliking Paine, is that they have been forced to adopt so ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... under the cowl clearer than he, or the proud bad heart under the scarlet hat; and few men had ventured to speak their thoughts more boldly. But there was in More a want of confidence in human nature, a scorn of the follies of his fellow creatures which, as he became more earnestly religious, narrowed and hardened his convictions, and transformed the genial philosopher into the merciless bigot. "Heresy" was naturally hateful to him; his mind was too clear and genuine to allow him to deceive himself with the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... sometimes by naturalists the alouatte. It is known also as 'the preacher.' If he could discourse of sin and folly, and point out to benighted man the evil of his ways, he might howl to some purpose but his preaching is lost on the denizens of the forest, who know nothing of sin, and are free from the follies of the world. Observe that with how little apparent difficulty he gives forth that terrific note. It is produced by a drum-shaped expansion of the larynx. The hyoid bone, which in man is but slightly developed, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... unexpected; for at every such crisis every one is certain of a call from this Visitor, this merciless critic, plain and rude of speech, rare and reluctant in praise, so mocking in our moments of elation, so cruelly frank about our follies and self-excuses when he comes in our ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... "Whatever follies or sins I may have committed," he said, solemnly, "I have not acted a hypocrite's part in this matter. Did you ever yet find me out, father, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... character, the high metal of her temper. Her words with Hardinge, all playful as they appeared on the surface, had, he was certain, a deeper significance. But this wonderful girl was dearly affectionate, in the midst of all her follies, and she would not grieve her father by telling him the secret of the thoughts which had moved her bosom since the morning. He had pleaded for quietude during the unquiet days that were coming. She was resolved he should have it in so far as it depended upon her. At least it was much too early ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... people who have children transfer their childish follies and fancies to them, and become properly sedate and grown-up. Perhaps it is because I am an old maid, and have none, that some of my nursery whims stick to me, and I find myself liking things, and wanting things, quite out of keeping with my cap and time ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots. Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic religion, remember they are the follies of four millions of human beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth and intelligence, who, if firmly united with this country, would set at defiance the power ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... his thick, carefully brushed hair. She was filled with curiosity as to the thoughts just then in that marvelous brain of his; nor did it lessen her curiosity to know that never would those thoughts be revealed to her. What women had he loved? What women had loved him? What follies had he committed? From how many sources he must have gathered his knowledge of human nature of—woman nature! And no doubt he was still gathering. What woman was ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... shouted, "We must levy hoplites at Zacynthus," And there the woman, up to the ears in wine, Was screaming "Weep for Adonis" on the house-top, The scoundrelly politician, that lunatic ox, Bellowing bad advice through tipsy shrieks: Such are the follies wantoning in them. ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... from being able to mend matters by his casting about, as you call it, that he will find no occasions of doing any good: the ill company will sooner corrupt him, than be the better for him: or if notwithstanding all their ill company, he still remains steady and innocent, yet their follies and knavery will be imputed to him; and by mixing counsels with them, he must bear his share of all the blame that belongs wholly ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... took up a fir-cone lying near and threw it at the nose of the collie, who made a jump at it, and then resumed an attitude of blinking and dignified protest against his mistress's follies. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of dreams sleeping and dreams waking, and was pleasing myself with the dialogues between the old matronal lady and the young lady, and with the metamorphoses, (absolutely assured that every thing would happen as my dream chalked it out,) shall never more depend upon those flying follies, those illusions of a fancy depraved, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... whole development that my conduct was regulated according to the more or less close mental and outward connection in which I stood with her. The storm and stress period, during which my effervescent youthful spirits led me into all sorts of follies, was the only time in my life in which this close connection threatened to be loosened. Yet Fate provided that it should soon be welded more firmly than ever. When she died, a beloved wife stood by my side, but she was part of myself; and in my mother Fate seemed to have robbed me of the supreme ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "for a Christmas present, and you give me this—this damned reminder of years, and sins and follies—this hand-conscience. Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all?" asked Jo, as Mrs. March looked silently at the downcast face of her pretty daughter, and could not find it in her heart to blame her little follies. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... their lamentation over them, and the heathenish doubt whether they shall know them again. Verily it were a wonder if they did! After a year or two of such a fate, they might well be unrecognizable! One is almost ashamed of writing about such follies. The nirvana is grandeur contrasted with their heaven. The early Christians might now and then plague Paul with a foolish question, the answer to which plagues us to this day; but was there ever one of them doubted he was going to find his friends again? ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... me, if I may so express it," added the Professor, "that really it would be in the nature of making amends for—well, for—for our youthful follies," concluded the Professor ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... goldsmith, "you have now a pretty little fortune; and if you will take my advice, you will let me place your florins in a safe quarter, where they may increase and multiply, instead of slipping through your fingers for banquets and other follies which are rife among our Florentine youth. And it has been too much the fashion of scholars, especially when, like our Pietro Crinito, they think their scholarship needs to be scented and broidered, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... in his own tongue, "I did it for Japan! Who are you to blame me, who have offered his own life so freely? I have no weight in the world. For you the future is big. You will go back to Japan, you will sit at the right hand of the Emperor. You will tell him of the follies and the wisdom of these strange countries. You will guide him in difficulties. Your hand will be upon his as he writes across the sheets of time, for the glory of the Motherland. Banzai, illustrious Prince! I, too, ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... after this conversation Henry IV. expired, and his son, the Prince of Wales, was immediately proclaimed king by the title of Henry V. But his change was not alone in name or station; his vices and his follies he cast from him, as an unworthy garment, and assumed with royalty a royal mind. The debauched companions of his youth were banished from his presence and his counsels, and forbidden to approach within ten miles of his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... little, and all the faces of the court gave a sympathetic twitch. It was discovered that M. Fougas had evinced bad taste in letting a crumb of truth fall into a big plateful of follies. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... that would make others share its great good-fortune. Hence we are not at all shocked when the poet, in the fervor of his love for mankind, determinedly imputes to himself all the sins and vices and follies of his fellow-men. We rather glory in it. This self-abasement is the seal of the authenticity of his egotism. Without those things there might be some ground for the complaint of a Boston critic of Whitman that his work was not noble, because it celebrated pride, and did not inculcate the virtues ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... hopelessly grinding in the mill. So the whirligig of time brings in its revenges, and except that the Jew knows better than to foreclose, you may see Americans bound in the same chains with which they themselves had formerly bound the Mexican. It seems as if certain sorts of follies, like certain sorts of grain, were natural to the soil rather than to the race that holds and tills it for ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... world, this is, old man, It's a purty good world this is; For all its follies and shows and lies, Its rainy weather, and cheeks likewise, And age, hard hearing, and rheumatiz; We're not a faultin' the Lord's own plan; All things jest At their best, It's a puny good ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... trader. Don't you remember your own youthful follies? If you are of the male persuasion, would you have traded your jack-knife for TOM SMITH'S bull-pup, if there had been a tariff on the pup. Or, if you are of the feminine persuasibility, would you have swapped your ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... brilliant career, as a soldier and a conqueror; but how precious few, insignificant pages do we ever see of the misdeeds, tyrannies and acts of petty and contemptuous meanness so great a man was guilty of! Why should authors and orators be so reluctant to tell the truth of a great man's follies and crimes, seeing with what convenience and fluency they will lie for him? We contend, and shall contend, that a truly great man cannot be guilty of a small act, and that one contemptible or atrocious manifestation in man, is enough to sully—tarnish the brightness of a dozen ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... contests between the Portuguese and Dutch grew more bitter and violent, and the arrogance of the Portuguese more unbearable, until at length, in 1637, the climax of their offences was reached, and the affections of the Japanese rulers, which, but for their own follies, would always have been with them, were turned into the most unrelenting hatred. The Portuguese, not content with the great privileges they already enjoyed, formed a conspiracy with certain of the native Christian princes to depose the Ziogoon, overturn the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... it seems to me, Olympia, that you of the North do not seem to realize the seriousness of the war, the determination of our side to make the South free? Here you go about the common business of life, parties, balls, dress, and all the follies of peace, as if war could not affect you at all. Your newspapers are full of coarse jokes at the expense of your own soldiers, your own President. There seems no devotion to your own cause, such as we feel in the South. I believe that if put to a vote more than half the North would ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... little or no danger that a Home-Ruled Ireland will commit tariff follies of her own, she has unquestionably a right to escape from further entanglement in the tariff policy of Great Britain. What may be the issue of Great Britain's great fiscal controversy nobody can ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... perhaps life's happiest periods. The wind might be sounding and the old leaves flying in the wood, the air might chill and nip, but there was no bitterness for us in the season's chiding. To-day, an old man, with the follies of youth made plain and contemptible, I cannot but think those eves in the forest had something precious and magic for memory. There is no sorrow in them but that they are no more, and that the world to come may have no repetition. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... honest or discreet folks, as there be an infinite number nowadays where papistry is used; these, I say, we have utterly refused without all manner exception, because we would not have the right worshipping of God any longer denied with such follies. ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... up!" snarled Johnson to his ancient work-mate. "Mr. Burnit, I have no right to take the liberty, but I am going to congratulate you, sir. Whatever follies inexperience may have led you to commit, you are, at any rate, sir, a man, like your father was before you!" and by way of emphasis Johnson smacked his fist on his desk as he glared in Mr. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... From there it was but a short walk to Armentieres, that centre of the great world, where Perrier water champagne and other delights could be obtained, where in a luxurious tea-room you were waited upon by female attendants of seductive aspect, and where two variety entertainments, the "Follies" and "Frivolities," were on view most nights. The ugly industrial town had then been little injured by shells, though every now and then it received its share. The Huns sometimes playfully directed against it French 220's ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... down upon the ground, apparently struck by the tone in which Wilton spoke. He answered at length, however, raising his eyes with one of his gay looks, "After all, we are but mortals, my dear Wilton, and we must have our little follies and vices. I would not be an angel for the world, for my part; and besides—for so staid and sober a young man as you are—you forget that I have a duty to perform towards my father, to check him when I see him going wrong, and to put him in the right ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... up, coaxingly. What brooding brown eyes the poor cripple had! Not many years ago he would have sat down with the two poor souls, and made a hearty meal of it: he had no heart for such follies now. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... up courage to boom again, but more subduedly]. You are taking an ungentlemanly advantage of what I confided to you for your own good, to save you from an error you would have repented all your life long. Take warning by your father's follies, sir; and don't make them ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Judy show and playing your sinister farces; I want to believe that you had and still have honourable and avowable intentions; that it is only your natural inexperience joined to the difficulties of the moment which is the cause of your faults and your follies; I want to believe that there are among you, even after the successive dismissal of so many of your members, some honourable men who deplore the evil that has been done, who wish to repair it, and who will try to make us forget the crimes and forfeits of the civil war by the benefits which revolution ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... "even the dogs feel the chastening influence of the Lady of Night and repent of the sins of their youth and the follies of their manhood, or should one say doghood? Come along. I feel that the call of duty must tear us away from the contemplation of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... where the stripes and stars of America will be able to protect the principles of FREE SHIPS, FREE GOODS. Determine the character of your country's future administration from a broad American view, and not from any petty considerations of small party follies. With these humble suggestions I cordially thank you for your sympathy, and ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... implanted an instinctive love. It is true that the criminal may have been led by the example of aristocratic sinners to disregard the injunctions of revealed religion against the adulterer, the gamester, and the drunkard; and having imitated the "pleasant follies" of the great without possessing the requisite means for such enjoyments, the man of pleasure has degenerated into the man of crime. It is true that the poor and ignorant may have claims upon the wealth and the intelligence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... best of us follow both, as sheep follow their leader. We will sometimes follow our neighbor's line of insular prejudice, when worlds could not bribe us to copy her grammar or her gowns. Dull people admire youth. They excuse its follies; they adore its prettiness. That it is only a period of education, and that real life begins with maturity, does not enter into their minds. The odor of bread and butter does not nauseate them. Dull people, I say—and God pity us, most of us are dull—admire youth. Men love ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... I add,—but see the boat at hand, The tide, retiring, calls me from the land: [qq] Farewell!—When youth, and health, and fortune spent, Thou fly'st for refuge to the wilds of Kent; And, tir'd, like me, with follies and with crimes, In angry numbers warn'st succeeding times; Then shall thy friend, nor thou refuse his aid, Still foe to vice, forsake his Cambrian shade; In virtue's cause, once more, exert his rage, Thy satire point, and ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... could be very kind and indulgent. He had been kind and generous to me. He gave me my tuition, and had taken unwearied pains with my lessons. He could forgive great offences, but had no toleration for little follies. He really thought it a sinful waste of time to write poetry in school. He had given me a subject for composition, a useful, practical one, but not at all to my taste, and I had ventured to disregard it. I had jumped over the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... known, as an absolute Master, and generous Patron of Polite Letters; of those Works especially which discover a Moral, as well as Genius; and by a delicate Raillery laugh men out of their Follies and Vices: could the Translator, therefore, of this Piece come anything near the Original, it were assured of your Acceptance. He will not dare to arrogate any thing to himself on this Head, before so good a Judge as Your LORDSHIP: He hopes, however, it will appear that, where he seems too superstitious ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... the ridiculous follies, peevishness, and perversity of our masters; we have been behind the shows and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the faithful. But what is the fact? Did it not come out of the foul box of Tetzel the indulgence-monger? Every stone in it is representative of so much sin. With all its grandeur, it is but a stupendous monument of the follies and vices, the crimes and the superstition, of Christendom in the ages which preceded the Reformation. It has cost Rome dear. We do not allude to the twelve millions its erection is said to have cost, but to the mighty rent to which it gave rise in the Roman world. In ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... other side of the road. "It's all right now. I've changed those follies for others. But while I had them I began to write, and even now I keep on writing, though I know better. I've got quite a pile of little stories, all harping on this ridiculous idea of ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... shaking out your shroud all the way down- -you know you did. I never seen a man as scared as you was!" When Bridges accepted the accusation with a grin, the speaker ran on, in a less resentful tone: "I don't mind saying it hardened my arteries some. It made me think of all my sins and follies; I remembered all the bets I'd overlooked. Recollect that pioneer we laid for ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... are made up of follies and faults, That, if time but serv'd, would lead us to crime; And for every time my darling halts, I am sure ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... happened also with respect to the Reform Bill. Wherever great interests are at stake there will be much excitement; and wherever there is much excitement there will be some extravagance. The same great stirring of the human mind which produced the Reformation produced also the follies and crimes of the Anabaptists. The same spirit which resisted the Ship-money, and abolished the Star Chamber, produced the Levellers and the Fifth Monarchy men. And so, it cannot be denied that bad men, availing themselves of the agitation produced by the question of Reform, have promulgated, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the city are uncontrolled by respect or veneration," he said, quietly. "The follies they commit are sometimes ludicrous. Better things are not to be looked for in a generation given to dress as a chief ambition. And then it may be, O my Gul-Bahar"—he kissed her as he uttered the endearment—"it may be he of whom you complain does ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... is it to me whether he be on the roll or no? Petrousha shall not go to Petersburg! What would he learn there? To spend money and commit follies. No, he shall serve with the army, he shall smell powder, he shall become a soldier and not an idler of the Guard, he shall wear out the straps of his knapsack. Where is his ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... his tact and talent had created himself a revenue in the opulent family of the celebrated marechal. From his infancy he had, with calculation beyond his age, lent his mane and complaisance to the follies of the Comte de Guiche. If his noble companion had stolen some fruit destined for Madame la Marechale, if he had broken a mirror, or put out a dog's eye, Manicamp declared himself guilty of the crime committed, and received the punishment, which was ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "There are no fools like old fools." It might be said with equal truth, there are no follies like the ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... them. "He is the fellow whom I saved from suicide at Monte Carlo, and now he is in the ranks of the men who have planned the worst crime of the twentieth century. Surigny is now where his follies have placed him—associated with the vilest creatures who ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... That these follies are universally characterized, wherever they occur, by the term "a woman's way of doing business," is sufficient proof that they are characteristic of the majority of women; but that the cause of the trouble lies, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... vain to wish, for Time has ta'en his flight— For follies past be ceas'd the fruitless tears: Let follies past to future care incite. 15 Averse maturer judgements to obey Youth owns, with pleasure owns, the Passions' sway, But sage ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... commerce of the motherland. Let not France now rest at home, content with her perfect laws and with the conquest of her "natural frontiers." Let her rather strive to regain the first place in colonial activity which the follies of Louis XV. and the secular jealousy of Albion had filched from her. In the effort she would extend the bounds of civilization, lay the ghost of Jacobinism, satisfy military and naval adventures, and unconsciously revert to the ideas and governmental methods ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... "The follies of the young are the sorrows of the old!" he murmured. "He has not slept all night; still, this is a sleep which rests not nor refreshes. His coffee will do him more good, and then he can ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... "foolish, if you will. And I am tired of the struggle, tired of weeping at my country's trials, her follies. I shall be glad to leave. I can die without a murmur. When I go back to Havana I shall have no one to care about me, and it will ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... talking of her lover touched a sympathetic chord in the breast of her mistress. Grand passions were grand follies in Angelique's estimation, which she was less capable of appreciating than even her maid; but flirtation and coquetry, skin-deep only, she could understand, and relished beyond all other enjoyments. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... you with anything," answered Mehetabel hastily. "Indeed, it is not that, but somehow I fell, and I suppose with fright, and a blow I got in falling, every event got so mixed with fancies and follies that I don't know where truth begins and fancy ends. For that reason I do ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... Antiquated as our popular follies was the organization of our small society. It was a caste system with social levels sharply marked off, and families united by clannish ties. The rich looked down on the poor, the merchants looked down ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... stripped, while all her qualities of gentleness and charm should be preserved. The old-world lady was to be merged into a woman strong, capable, severely beautiful, a creature who had all of the virtues and none of the follies ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... nothing of that. She is at the scribbling age, and can actually endure to describe, as if they were new and entirely original, the dawning follies of seventeen. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... has no friends, for he has no weaknesses. While others fall to the simple follies of humanity He walks ever upright and self-contained, devout and dignified, And ill-treats ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... modesty, admitting that they are vague and uncertain and (what it is even more important to notice) mythical in their terms; but it seems to me that, for all that, they are an admirable counterblast to prevalent follies. When we hear that there is, animating the whole universe, an Elan vital, or general impulse toward some unknown but single ideal, the terms used are no less uncertain, mythical, and vague, but the suggestion conveyed is false—false, I ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... people whom he had met with abroad, quaint comparisons between the social customs of various nations, illustrated by examples drawn from men and women indiscriminately all over Europe, humorous confessions of the innocent follies of his own early life, when he ruled the fashions of a second-rate Italian town, and wrote preposterous romances on the French model for a second-rate Italian newspaper—all flowed in succession so easily and so gaily from his lips, and ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... passions inflamed; in this resolution he persists a few days, but soon yields to an invitation, which will give his prevailing inclination an opportunity of reviving in all its force. The case is the same with other men; but is reason to be charged with these calamities and follies, or rather the man who refuses to listen to its voice in opposition to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... threw themselves at the Fairy's feet, and the Prince was never tired of thanking her for her kindness. Celia was delighted to hear how sorry he was for all his past follies and misdeeds, and promised to love him ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... the pious and virtuous, and protect him to the utmost of your power from the sight or hearing of any crime, in word or action. He must be educated in religious and moral principles of the strictest description. Let him not enter the world, lest he learn to partake of its follies, or perhaps of its vices. In short, preserve him as far as possible from all sin, save that of which too great a portion belongs to all the fallen race of Adam. With the approach of his twenty-first birth-day comes the crisis ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... of guineas, and those sacks of dollars, will make about ten thousand pounds. That will make me a nest-egg when I retire from the profession and return to Scotland. They will have forgotten all my boyish follies by that time." ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... credulous mankind and the initial stages of development, the malign influence would seem to be ever in the ascendant, irrespective of the social status of the, more or less, pre-natally affected, innocent reproduction wherein is focused the latent follies and delinquencies of the race, as portrayed in the course of ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... together, the French Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. Everything seems out of nature in this chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the mind; alternate contempt and indignation; laughter and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... from which he took a manuscript scroll inscribed in the Arabic language. "The first page," said Prince Achmed, "contains a few thoughts upon the superiority of the Moslem faith over all others and a discussion of the follies, inconsistencies, not to say evils of them all when compared with that perfect religious system declared to men by the Prophet of Mecca," and having in an orotund voice given Mr. Middleton some idea of the contents of this page by quoting ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... sarcasms which are tolerable in a passionate young reformer smarting under the follies of George IV., are a serious defect in a grave historian, when used indiscriminately of men and women in every age and under every condition. In his Machiavelli, Macaulay hints that the best histories are perhaps "those in which ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... that is, it is the general case in a more intense degree. Raised almost to divine honors, never mentioned but with affected rapture, the classics of Greece and Rome are seldom read, most of them never; are they, indeed, the closet companions of any man? Surely it is time that these follies were at an end; that our practice were made to square a little better with our professions; and that our pleasures were sincerely drawn from those sources in which we ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... William Rider's house was known as Kirby Castle, and was supposed to have been built in 1570 by John Thorpe for John Kirby. It was associated in rhyme with other follies of the time in bricks and mortar, as recorded ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... unknown to one another, the one on the shores of the Ganges, the other by the Jordan. A dozen forgotten explorers, feeling America, prepared the way for Columbus to discover it. A deluge of blood is required to sweep away old follies, and Rousseau and Voltaire, and a myriad others are set to work to fashion the storm clouds. The steam-engine, the spinning loom is 'in the air.' A thousand brains are busy with them, a few go further than the rest. It ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... moment, when Ruth's follies and ill humors were rising to an almost unbearable height, that her higher nature asserted itself, and shone forth in a rich, full laugh. Then, in much glee and good feeling, they followed the crowd down ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... and my spirit knows it, Never, ah, never my heart forgets, One thing fixed, in the torrent of changing, Faults and follies and fierce regrets. Thine eyes and thy hair, that were lovely symbols Of that white soul that their grace enshrined, They are part of me and my life for ever, In ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... a small salary with such difficulty. The misunderstandings between them became more pronounced, but with the view of pleasing his wife Hennebeau accepted a situation in an office in Paris. But Paris only completed their separation, for she immediately threw herself into all the luxurious follies of the period. During the ten years spent there she carried on an open intrigue with a man whose desertion nearly killed her. It was then that her husband accepted the management of the Montsou mines, still hoping that his wife might be changed down there in that desolate black ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... of all the languages spoken in Rio—Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French. Above all, he had a boundless confidence in himself. What an honorable future might have been his but for his youthful follies! Truly he could have achieved a wonderful success in any honorable career. Unhappily for him, he, like thousands of our brainiest youth, had entered the Primrose Way. In our youthful fire and thoughtlessness we saw only the flowers and heard the siren's ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... By motions strange the year to frame, Which now, returned whence it begun, From Heaven extols Thy glorious Name; This New Year's season sanctify With double blessings of Thy store, That graces new may multiply, And former follies reign no more. So shall our hearts with Heaven agree, And both give laud and praise ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... back to the pot and the pad, The fair it is over, the women are glad; For now the Wool-comber his follies he sees, And makes resolutions as staunch as ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... wondered at, for the same thing has always happened the world over under similar conditions. Our defeats were exactly such as any man might have foreseen, and there is nothing to be learned from the follies committed by incompetent commanders and untrained troops when in the presence of skilled officers having under them disciplined soldiers. The humiliating surrenders, abortive attacks, and panic routs of our armies can all be paralleled in the campaigns waged by Napoleon's marshals ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! and if one read profitably, one would see the deplorable follies to which the common people offer themselves ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... indicated in the foregoing conversation. The change from the existence of a voluptuary, squandering thousands on the wanton pleasure of the moment, to that of a common sailor, was at first anything but agreeable, and often and bitterly did I curse the follies of the past. However, we learn from experience, and probably I have profited by the unpalatable lesson. Webster was a firm ally, and showed that despite his dissolute and reckless mode of living, he really did possess something of the character which he claimed, that of ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... I should indeed, and shortly. But, come now, I am sated of thy follies and roguish tricks, and yearn after the sound doctrine of that pious man. What expounded the grave Glaston upon signs and tokens whereby ye shall ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... of these small celebrations came early in June, when they dined all four together and went to the summer's opening of "The Follies of 1914." The show rather dragged a bit at first, but when Bert Williams took the stage Bruce's laugh became so contagious that people in seats on every hand turned to look at him and join in his glee. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... and raw! and, in addition, badly written. It is a pity for prophets and poets to meddle with realities, instead of devoting themselves to futurity and poetry. George is happy in the intellectual wealth of Paris life, and quite perplexed at the perverseness and follies of the political cliques. He promises to write about the acquaintance of Lamenais and George Sand. I am well, but fully use the right of a convalescent, and hardly ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... in having some conception of gallantry, a determination and vow to protect widows and orphans, to respect and honor ladies. Though it was at first only a fashion, with all the extravagances and follies usual to fashions, it did much good by creating an ideal for later generations to live up to. From this point of view even the quixotic pranks of the knights who fought duels in support of their challenge that no other lady equalled theirs in beauty, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... long since he had been a badly bored, impatient young man, mocking the follies of the masquerade? How long since he had danced with Jinny, flouting her notion of this sort of thing as life? How long since he had looked into a pair of dark disquieting eyes ... listened ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... us rapidly pass over these follies and hasten to something more exquisitely foolish. And yet I cannot, I have to clear away many dull weeds, and tread down many noxious nettles, before I can reach the one fresh and thornless rose, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... incredulity and contempt of divine power on the one hand, and so miserable, also, superstition on the other, which like water, where the level has been lowered, flowing in and never stopping, fills the mind with slavish fears and follies, as now in Alexander's case. But upon some answers which were brought him from the oracle concerning Hephaestion, he laid aside his sorrow, and fell again to sacrificing and drinking; and having given Nearchus a splendid entertainment, after he had ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... caution and qualification. We are too much accustomed to such declamations in our own time not to recognise an ordinary trick of satirists and declaimers. As long as a people can bear patiently to hear their own errors and follies scornfully proclaimed, they have not become altogether degenerate or corrupt. Yet still, making every allowance for rhetorical or poetic exaggeration, it is not more evident than natural that the luxury of civilization—the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fathers of the Church, who never went to bed without something from Aristophanes under his pillow." He adds: "But the noble tone of morals, the elevated taste, the sound political wisdom, the boldness and acuteness of the satire, the grand object, which is seen throughout, of correcting the follies of the day, and improving the condition of his country—all these are features in Aristophanes which, however disguised, as they intentionally are, by coarseness and buffoonery, entitle him to the highest respect from every reader of antiquity." Yet, while ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... peace, their venerable age was made a mockery by the young Prince, who met their proffered salutations by plucking at their beards. This appears to have been as deadly an insult to the Irish as it is to the Asiatics, and the deeply offended guests instantly quitted Waterford. Other follies and excesses rapidly transpired, and the native nobles began to discover that a royal army encumbered, rather than led by such a Prince, was not likely to prove itself invincible. In an idle parade from the Suir to the Liffey, from the Liffey to the Boyne, and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... vivid imagination chose to picture her. But whatever Dare's faults may have been—and Ruth was not blind to them—he was at least head over ears in love with her, fortune or none; and as his attachment deepened, it burned up like fire all the little follies ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... that is something; the elders exchange all manner of simple pleasantries and civilities, and talk over their domestic affairs, while the young people flirt, in that wholesome manner which is one of the safest of youthful follies. A country party, in fact, may be set down as a work of benevolence, and the money expended thereon fairly charged to the account of the great cause of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... in love with the girl you can't expect one so ancient as myself, who is quite out of touch with such follies, to teach you how ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... person—she must be an actress. Don't you remember the auburn-haired leading lady in the 'Follies'—the girl who sings that song about 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary'? Her stage name, you know, is Phoebe La Neige. Well, if it's she who is concerned in this case I don't think she'll be playing to-night. Let's inquire ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... must be bold in discharging the duty of my Master. It is a shame and scandal to hear two nobles, whose hands have been so forward in the work of reformation, fall into discord about such vain follies as now occupy your thoughts. Bethink you how long you have thought with one mind, seen with one eye, heard with one ear, confirmed by your union the congregation of the Church, appalled by your joint authority the congregation of Anti-Christ; and will you now fall into discord, about an old ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... should have waited a few minutes longer, and then Mildman would have gone off without knowing anything about him. Depend upon it, the grand rule of life is to take things coolly, and wait for an opportunity: you have the game in your own hands then, and can take advantage of the follies and passions of others, instead of allowing them to ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of our expiring Lord The honors of thy law restored; His sorrows made thy justice known. And paid for follies not his own. ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... he threatened the capital of the great nation which I command?[22] The Duke of Brunswick has disavowed the insensate manifesto of 1792; one would have thought that with age reason had begun to get the better of his passions, and yet he has again lent the authority of his name to the follies of hot-headed youth, which have brought ruin upon Prussia. To him it belonged to put women, courtiers, and young officers, into their proper places, and to make all feel the authority of his age, of his understanding, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... in thy early years, How prodigal of time! Misspending all thy precious hours, Thy glorious youthful prime! Alternate follies take the sway, Licentious passions burn; Which tenfold force gives Nature's law, That man was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... their infancy; a time when the tender mind is most apt to receive the impressions of error and vice, as well as those of truth and virtue, and, having once received either the one or the other, is likely to retain them as long as it subsists in the body. All these deplorable follies proceed from wrong and unworthy apprehensions of God's providence, in his care of man, and government of the world. Surely no reasonable creature can ever imagine, that the all-wise God should inspire owls and ravens ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor |
