It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.

The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.

To swallow gudgeons ere they're catch'd And count their chickens ere they're hatch'd.

Paying the high cost of education is better than paying the high price of ignorance.

He who lives without committing any folly is not so wise as he thinks.

I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!

Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society.

Not for the first time I find our lives are a shadow, and I am not afraid to say that people who think they have everything figured out and are masters of logic - they are responsible for the greatest folly. No human being is happy. Strike it rich and you are luckier than your neighbor - but happy, never.

The lowest wisdom of the wise is greater than the highest wisdom of fools.

Wisdom’s slaves are better than folly’s kings.