In Praise of Folly quotes

so as there is a great deal of truth couched in that old proverb,

Once an old man, and twice a child.

Now if any one be curious to understand what course I take to effect this alteration, my method is this:

they can drink briskly, bear up stoutly, and lightly pass over such infirmities, as a far stronger constitution could scarce master. Sometime, with the old fellow in Plautus, they are brought back to their horn-book again, to learn to spell their fortune in love.

Most wretched would they needs be if they had but wit enough to be sensible of their hard condition;

but by my assistance, they carry off all well, and to their respective friends approve themselves good, sociable, jolly companions. Thus Homer makes aged Nestor famed for a smooth oily-tongued orator, while the delivery of Achilles was but rough, harsh, and hesitant;

And yet if it were not so there will be no relish to any of our words or actions.

Take away this one property of a fool, and the orator shall become as dumb and silent as the pulpit he stands in;

the musician shall hang up his untouched instruments on the wall; the completest actors shall be hissed off the stage; the poet shall be burlesqued with his own doggrel rhymes; the painter shall himself vanish into an imaginary landscape;

because he knows nothing how the world goes, and is wholly unacquainted with the humour of the vulgar, who cannot but hate a person so disagreeing in temper from themselves.

And indeed the whole proceedings of the world are nothing but one continued scene of Folly, all the actors being equally fools and madmen;

and therefore if any be so pragmatically wise as to be singular, he must even turn a second Timon, or man-hater, and by retiring into some unfrequented desert, become a recluse from all mankind.

would not any one think such a person quite frantic, and ripe for bedlam?

For as nothing is more silly than preposterous wisdom, so is there nothing more indiscreet than an unreasonable reproof.

And therefore he is to be hooted out of all society that will not be pliable, conformable, and willing to suit his humour with other men's, remembering the law of clubs and meetings, that he who will not do as the rest must get him …

and he that represented a king, will remain but a mean ordinary serving-man. The laying things thus open is marring all the sport, which consists only in counterfeit and disguise.

Now the world is nothing else but such another comedy, where every one in the tire-room is first habited suitably to the part he is to act;

and as it is successively their turn, out they come on the stage, where he that now personates a prince, shall in another part of the same play alter his dress, and become a beggar, all things being in a mask and particular disguise, or …

… are those persons incomparably most happy that have least to do with any at all, but jog on in the common road of nature, which will never mislead us, except we voluntarily leap over those boundaries which she has cautiously set to our finite beings.

Nature glitters most in her own plain, homely garb, and then gives the greatest lustre when she is unsullied from all artificial garnish.

Thus if we enquire into the state of all dumb creatures, we shall find those fare best that are left to nature's conduct: as to instance in bees, what is more to be admired than the industry and contrivance of these little animals?

… sea of drunkenness truth swims uppermost, and so wine is the only teller of truth, yet this character may more justly be assumed by me, as I can make good from the authority of Euripides, who lays down this as an axiom uwpa uwpos heyei.

Children and fools always speak the truth.

Whatever the fool has in his heart he betrays it in his face; or what is more notifying, discovers it by his words: while the wise man, as Euripides observes, carries a double tongue;

Children and fools always speak the truth.

Whatever the fool has in his heart he betrays it in his face;

or what is more notifying, discovers it by his words: while the wise man, as Euripides observes, carries a double tongue; the one to speak what may be said, the other what ought to be; the one what truth, the other what the time requires:

And this species of madness is of larger extent than the world commonly imagines.

Thus the whole tribe of madmen make sport among themselves, while one laughs at another; he that is more mad many times jeering him that is less so.

But indeed the greater each man's madness is, the greater is his happiness, if it be but such a sort as proceeds from an excess of folly, which is so epidemical a distemper that it is hard to find any one man so uninfected as …

nay, when their hopes come to the last gasp, after all their disappointments, they have yet one salvo for their credit, that:—

In great exploits our bare attempts suffice.

And so inveigh against the shortness of their life, which allows them not time enough to bring their designs to maturity and perfection.

After all these acknowledgments of escapes from such singular dangers, there is none (as I have before intimated) that return thanks for being freed from Folly;

Folly being so sweet and luscious, that it is rather sued for as a happiness, than deprecated as a punishment

But why should I launch out into so wide a sea of superstitions?

nor will they ever desist from this way of declaiming, till their mouth be stopped with a bribe to hold their tongue.

All their preaching is mere stage-playing, and their delivery the very transports of ridicule and drollery.

Good Lord! how mimical are their gestures? What heights and falls in their voice? What toning, what bawling, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, making of mouths, apes' faces, and distorting of their countenance;

plainly intimating, that the wise man is attended with grief and vexation, while the foolish only roll in delight and pleasure. To the same purpose is that saying of his in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes,

In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Again, it is confessed by the same preacher in the seventh chapter of the same book, That the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

but I will assure you, you are grossly mistaken if you suppose that after such a hodge-podge medley of speech I should be able to recollect anything I have delivered.

Beside, as it is an old proverb, I hate a pot-companion with a good memory; so indeed I may as truly say, I hate a hearer that will carry any thing away with him.

Wherefore, in short:—