The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.
Politically, Swift was one of those people who are driven into a sort of perverse Toryism by the follies of the progressive party of the moment.
How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.
Though you may be last to discover your follies, be always first to correct them.
One's conscience reproaches one much more stingingly for one's follies than one's crimes.
What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised; and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
By their own follies they perished, the fools.
There are certain people fated to be fools; they not only commit follies by choice, but are even constrained to do so by fortune.
Maybe it’s that I find it hard to forgive the follies and vices of others, or their offenses against me. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.
The world is a chessboard, Madam, on which we play out our ploys and follies. You are the Queen, of course. Your moves are the strongest. For myself, I claim only to be a knight, advancing in a crooked progress. Do we move ourselves, do you think, or does a great gloved hand place on our squares
Such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that security and despair are equal follies; and as it is presumption and arrogance to anticipate triumphs, it is weakness and cowardice to prog-nosticate miscarriages.
You desire to be learned, wealthy, and great, without labor; it is one of the follies still extant in the world.
There are follies as catching as contagious disorders.
History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times.
And others' follies teach us not, Nor much their wisdom teaches, And most, of sterling worth, is what Our own experience preaches.
Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.
All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.
Thus aged men, full loth and slow, The vanities of life forego, And count their youthful follies o'er, Till Memory lends her light no more.
Men, when their actions succeed not as they would, are always ready to impute the blame thereof to heaven, so as to excuse their own follies.
We love and we value peace; we know its blessings from experience. We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities.
