Foible

“ The odd Adventures, and Embarrassments, which Persons in real Life are drawn into by their Foibles, are fit Subjects of Mirth.--Whereas in pure Wit, the Allusions are rather surprizing, than mirthful; and the Agreements or Contrasts which are started between Objects, without any relation to the Foibles of Persons in real Life, are more fit to be admired for their Happiness and Propriety, than to excite our Laughter.--Besides, Wit, in the frequent Repetition of it, tires the Imagination with its precipitate Sallies and Flights ”

“ For here thou may thy fellow find,
Whether thou wilt, at long or short.
FOLLY. Come, look and thou darest, arise and assay.
MANHOOD. Yea, sir, but yet Conscience biddeth me nay.
FOLLY. No, sir, thou darest not in good fay,
For truly thou failest no [w] , false heart.
MANHOOD. What sayest thou? have I a false heart?
FOLLY. Yea, sir, in good fay.
MANHOOD. Manhood will not that I say nay.
Defend thee, Folly, if that you may,
For in faith I purpose to wete what thou art.
How sayest thou now, Folly, hast thou not a touch? ”

“ And first, every man allows this proverb, "That where a man wants matter, he may best frame some." And to this purpose is that verse which we teach children, "'Tis the greatest wisdom to know when and where to counterfeit the fool." And now judge yourselves what an excellent thing this folly is, whose very counterfeit and semblance only has got such praise from the learned. ”

“ Oh the infinite value of true wisdom here,—the wisdom that understands both ways, and rightly chooses between! The folly of fools is deceit may mean that the folly of fools proves to them deceit. Their confidence in it, and their expectations from it, are sheer delusion. Or the sense may be, “deceit is the folly of fools.” ”

“ The insanity of the King differs widely in its nature from that of the Fool, and that of the Fool from that of the beggar. But the insanity of the King differs from that of the beggar—not only in its nature, but also in the fact that one is real and the other simply a pretence. Are we to suppose then that the insanity of the third character, the Fool, is, in this respect, a mere repetition of that of the second, the beggar,—that it too is mere pretence? ”

“ As for those that think them herein so ridiculous, I would have them give an ingenuous answer to this one query, whether if folly or hanging were left to their choice, they had not much rather live like fools, than die like dogs? But what matter is it if these things are resented by the vulgar? Their ill word is no injury to fools, who are either altogether insensible of any affront, or at least lay it not much to heart. If they were knocked on the head, or had their brains dashed out, they would have some cause to complain ”

“ Sir Thomas Hammer reads, folly shewn. [The sense is, But wise men's folly, when it is once fallen into extravagance, overpowers their discretion. Revisal.] I explain it thus. The folly which he shows with proper adaptation to persons and times, is fit, has its propriety, and therefore produces no censure; but the folly of wise men when it falls or happens, taints their wit, destroys the reputation of their judgment. ”

“ To feign the fool when fit occasions rise, Argues the being more completely wise.
It is easy therefore to collect how great a value ought to be put upon real folly, when the very shadow, and bare imitation of it, is so much esteemed. ”

“ These are lies you are telling, and they will choke you, my Romany ‘chal’. Am I deceived, I who have known more liars than any man under the sky? Am I to be fooled, who have seen so many fools in their folly? ”

“ We have sunk so low now that we try to act our exaggerations, and to live up to our lies. We call it "keeping up appearances;" and no more bitter phrase could, perhaps, have been invented to describe our childish folly. ”

“ Whether we are reviewing the actions of ourselves or of others, what we seem to do, in the first instance, is to refer them to some class, or associate them with certain actions of a similar kind which are familiar to us, and, then, when their character has thus been determined, they excite the appropriate feeling of approbation or disapprobation, praise or censure. Thus, as soon as we have realised that a statement is a lie or an act is fraudulent, we at once experience a feeling of indignation or disgust at the person who has made the statement or committed the act. ”

“ Among the numerous stratagems, by which pride endeavours to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character, by fictitious appearances; whether it be, that every man hates falsehood, from the natural congruity of truths to his faculties of reason, or that every man is jealous of the honour of his understanding, and thinks his discernment consequently called in question, whenever any thing is exhibited under a borrowed form. ”

“ The words or thoughts of a free thinker and a free speaker, falling upon rather than into the ear of a servile and supine fool, will probably in all times bring forth such fruit as this. By way of solace or compensation for the folly which he half perceives and half admits, the fool must be allowed his little jest and his little lie. ”

“ And therefore, if you so carefully lay up such things as you value and throw away what's vile and of no worth, is it not plain that wisdom, which he forbids a man to hide, is of less account than folly, which he commands him to cover? ”

“ To this they all agreed, and search was made; and soon they found Falsehood, whom they instantly tore to pieces, coiled up her bowels into knots, burnt her, and dispersed her ashes to the winds. But even her dust was so malignant that it was carried all over the world; and that is the reason that wherever men exist there Falsehood must be. ”

“ Never tell me of the pang of falsehood to the slandered: nothing is so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth!
As I grew older, I saw my power and indulged it; and, being scolded for sarcasm, I was flattered into believing I had wit ”

“ Question, hypothesis, lamentation, and platitude dance their allotted round and fill the ordained space, while Ignorance masquerades in the garb of criticism, and Folly proffers her ancient epilogue of chastened hope. When all is said, nothing is said ”

“ You pass from folly to folly, from infatuation to infatuation, until at last you can with a grave face accept the monstrous self-contradiction of materialism, or wallow unresisting in the slime of a tormenting sensuality. "As the dog returns to his vomit"!
It must be owned that the condition of the fool seems sufficiently sad, and the gloom is deepened by the fact that our book knows nothing of a way by which the fool may become wise. The Proverbs uniformly regard the foolish and the wise as generically distinct ”

“ But the wise man listens to counsel (Pr. 1215) .
Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit?
There is more hope of a fool than of him (Pr. 2612) .
—the last, a saying that increases in force when a little later we come to note just what the Wise-men thought of a fool! With these proverbs on the Proud we may conveniently group some sayings on the man whose tongue runs away with his discretion:
The Garrulous Man
The tongue of the Wise distils knowledge,
But the mouth of fools poureth out folly (Pr. 152) .
A fool’s mouth is his destruction,
His lips are the snare of his soul (Pr. 187) . ”

“ To persist in acting wrongfully, that is the real folly. To reject good counsel, either of one's own good thoughts or the good thoughts of others. But to act foolishly by deciding hastily, by lack of mature reflection, that I should only call a foolish mistake. ”

“ The heart is the seat of the affections, and there wisdom must rest in the practical love of it, and not swim in the head. 2. Openness and ostentation are a mark of folly. If fools have a little smattering of knowledge, they take all occasions, though very foreign, to produce it, and bring it in by head and shoulders. Or the folly that is in the midst of fools is made known by their forwardness to talk. ”

“ Where would I be if I had taken to heart the criticisms of the degenerates on 'Degeneration?' I sit back and laugh at them for holding a hand mirror up to their faces and unconsciously crying out 'I see a fool!' To understand great truths,—and great truths are seldom popular,—one must bring a willing mind. ”

“ His wisdom was that of the self-deceived fool
Who quits the clear fount for the foul, stagnant pool,
Who puts out his eyes lest the light he descry,
Then shouts 'mid the gloom "how clear-sighted am I!" ”

“ For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny; in a word, upon all those deformities of character which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers of human society. ”

“ In the domain of secular literature and proverb-lore the material at our service is equally lavish in amount and definite in its pity and scorn of these unfortunates. The following may be accepted as samples from the bulk: "Wise men learn more from fools than fools from wise men"; "Folly, as well as wisdom, is justified in its children"; "Little minds, like small beer, are soon soured"; "Wise men make jests, and fools repeat them"; "He is a fool who makes his fist a wedge"; "On the heels of folly shame treads"; "To promise and give nothing is a comfort to a fool" ”

“ And first, if prudence depends upon experience, to whom is the honor of that name more proper? To the wise man, who partly out of modesty and partly distrust of himself, attempts nothing; or the fool, whom neither modesty which he never had, nor danger which he never considers, can discourage from anything? The wise man has recourse to the books of the ancients, and from thence picks nothing but subtleties of words. ”

“ Both fools, mere quibblers and sophists, idly and vainly attached to certain ridiculous notions of their own, founded neither on truth nor on reason. Their whole works are a strange medley of the greatest falsehoods, scarce covered over with the colour of truth: their precepts are neither borrowed from nature nor guided by reason; mere fictions, serving only to evince the dreadful height of human pride ”

“ OLIVIA. Go to, you're a dry fool; I'll no more of you: besides, you grow dishonest.
CLOWN. Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend; for, give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry: bid the dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. ”

“ I do not mean to diminish the blame of the injurious and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity; yet it seems to me, that the shortest way to check the darker forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupulous against those which have mingled, unregarded and unchastised, with the current of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended. ”

“ But, it is no wonder, that they, who were in all things false to themselves, false to one another, false to their country, false to Heaven, false to Earth, should be monsters of ingratitude and treachery to a helpless peasant girl. ”

“ The mouth of the prudent is sought after in the church, and they will think upon his words in their hearts.
21:21. As a house that is destroyed, so is wisdom to a fool: and the knowledge of the unwise is as words without sense.
21:22. Doctrine to a fool is as fetters on the feet, and like manacles on the right hand.
21:23. A fool lifteth up his voice in laughter: but a wise man will scarce laugh low to himself. ”

“ Everywhere he supposes that the doubter is hardened, conceited, consciously shutting his eyes to the light—a fool who is to be answered according to his folly—that is, with ready replies made up of reckless assertions, of apocryphal anecdotes, and, where other resources fail, of vituperative imputation. ”

“ Let's proceed then, and compare the condition of any of your wise men with that of this fool. Fancy to me now some example of wisdom you'd set up against him; one that had spent his childhood and youth in learning the sciences and lost the sweetest part of his life in watchings, cares, studies, and for the remaining part of it never so much as tasted the least of pleasure; ever sparing, poor, sad, sour, unjust, and rigorous to himself, and troublesome and hateful to others ”

“ Are they receiving, sealing, spreading the truth everywhere within your sphere? Are you dead to praise or dispraise? Could you quietly pass for a mere fool, and have gross nonsense fathered upon you without any uneasy reflection of self? ”

“ False priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceeding in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. ”

“ Follow out a lie to all its consequences, realise the feelings of the person deceived by it, when he has discovered the deception, above all, consider what would be the result if men were commonly to deceive one another, and no man could place any dependence on the information which his neighbour gave him; and then a falsehood excites very different feelings from what it does when regarded simply as an isolated act. ”

“ Every reader I feel confident will put me down a fool, perhaps a D— —d fool or worse. It is my privilege to forestall all, and accept the situation, you see, as gracefully as I can, contenting myself with the satisfaction of a conscience cleared by the confession of my shortcomings. ”

“ Take heed, lest by nice and subtle sophistry you burthen your knowing soul, or knowingly burthen your soul, with the guilt of advancing a false title, or of maintaining, by specious fallacies, a claim which, if shown in its native and true colours, would appear to be false. ”

“ No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of that class of falsehoods, which, by continued repetition, through all the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling into flame. ”