Quotes
Quotes about Fools
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep-contemplative;
And I did laugh sans intermission
An hour by his dial.
Here comes a pair of very strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools.
Thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I 'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
As if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion.
She was a wight, if ever such wight were,--
Des. To do what?
Iago. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.
Des. O most lame and impotent conclusion!
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Who are a little wise the best fools be.
For words are wise men's counters,--they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools.
Quoth she, I 've heard old cunning stagers
Say fools for arguments use wagers.
Since call'd
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown.
How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns.
Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
And all the fools that crowd thee so,
Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
A village less than Islington wilt grow,
A solitude almost.
And ever since the Conquest have been fools.
'T is an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.
Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best.
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is charity.
Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind;
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,--
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;
For fools admire, but men of sense approve.
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Fired that the house rejects him, "'Sdeath! I 'll print it,
And shame the fools."
There, take (says Justice), take ye each a shell:
We thrive at Westminster on fools like you;
'T was a fat oyster,--live in peace,--adieu.
Rare gift! but oh what gift to fools avails!
