"Follies" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... notwithstanding, we generally exclude from among the objects of our personal cares, many of the happier and more respectable qualities of human nature. We consider affection and courage as mere follies, that lead us to neglect, or expose ourselves; we make wisdom consist in a regard to our interest; and without explaining what interest means, we would have it understood as the only reasonable motive of action with mankind. There is even a system of philosophy ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... the people? Who profit by the ignorance of men and their vain prejudices? The priests! You are, O priests, rewarded, honored, and paid for deceiving mortals, and you punish those who undeceive them. The follies of men procure you blessings, offerings, expiations; the most useful truths bring to those who announce them, chains, sufferings, stakes. Let the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... his father, promised that he would be his servant to recover Mansoul. The purport of this agreement was that at a certain time, prefixed by both, the king's son should take a journey into the country of Universe, and there, in a way of justice and equity, make amends for the follies of Mansoul, and lay the foundation ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... infancy; a time when the tender mind is most apt to receive the impressions of error and vice, as well as those of truth and virtue, and, having once received either the one or the other, is likely to retain them as long as it subsists in the body. All these deplorable follies proceed from wrong and unworthy apprehensions of God's providence, in his care of man, and government of the world. Surely no reasonable creature can ever imagine, that the all-wise God should inspire owls and ravens to hoot out the elegies of dying men; that he should have ordained ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... Chicago were better known or better liked than the stout, florid complexioned, jovial-looking Billy Fernmore, the host of this entertainment. His social adventures and the headlong follies in which his fun-loving proclivities invariably enmeshed him were only surpassed by his fondness for ridding himself of his ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... away all his possessions at a single sitting, even to his horse and the armour on his back. Robert has an ame damnee in the shape of a knight named Bertram, to whose malign influence most of his crimes and follies are due. Bertram is in reality his demon-father, whose every effort is directed to making a thorough-paced villain of his son, so that he may have the pleasure of enjoying his society for all eternity. In strong contrast to the fiendish malevolence of Bertram stands ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... may have congratulated ourselves on having risen above them, but because it would be a mortification to us to have our friends know that we who believe in the possibility of such high moral attainments, should be guilty of these old weaknesses and follies. In every way, the tempter—mortal thought—may show us the fallibility of human nature and tempt us to disbelieve in our ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... It is known also as 'the preacher.' If he could discourse of sin and folly, and point out to benighted man the evil of his ways, he might howl to some purpose but his preaching is lost on the denizens of the forest, who know nothing of sin, and are free from the follies of the world. Observe that with how little apparent difficulty he gives forth that terrific note. It is produced by a drum-shaped expansion of the larynx. The hyoid bone, which in man is but slightly developed, is in these monkeys very large. It ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... N. Principes, passim, who everywhere demands the protection of the government for the weaker. Fourier, N. Monde industriel, 396, who thinks that le monopole general is always a preservatif contre le commerce. Bastiat, Harmonies economiques, ch. 10, has a very valuable refutation of these follies. Recently, Rodbertus, Hildebrand's Jahrbuecher, 1865, II, 272, is of opinion that "social individualism" has ever had in history the task of dissolving decaying societies, as, for instance, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... The Follies, and the place is true to its name as place can be. Oh, Lady Jane is well enough, but it is Miss Irene. Well, I wish you luck. You walk straight down this road for a mile or so, and turn in at the first gates you come to, and there you will be; and I ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... considered you a phenomenon, a prodigy. You were courageous, devoted, generosity itself; you esteemed honour above all the gold deposits in California; you detested all coarse thoughts and doubtful actions; your mother had nourished you in all sublime follies. You were a true chevalier, a true Pole, the last Don Quixote in this age of sceptics, plunderers, and interlopers. Blessed be the chance that made us acquainted! You lived retired, solitary, unknown, in a miserable hovel just outside of Bucharest. So goes the world! You ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... two influences at work in the youth which, together, saved him from the follies about him: first, and greater, the nobleness of character which was his by heredity; and, second, the high ideals formed ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... proceeding, which was as indecorous and absurd as the return of the Golden Fleece by Louis XVII. to the King of Spain was dignified and proper. Gustavus Adolphus was brave, enterprising, and chivalrous, but inconsiderate and irascible. He called Bonaparte Monsieur Napoleon. His follies and reverses in Hanover were without doubt the cause of his abdication. On the 31st of October 1805 he published a declaration of war against France in language highly ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... youth, tired of the monotony of home, and anxious to see what lay beyond the narrow confines of his father's farm, going forth in the confidence of his own simplicity and ardor, and led gradually away into follies and sins which at the outset would have been as distasteful as they were strange to him. The episode with which the parable concludes has no dramatic connection with the former and principal portion, and has therefore ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... could not endure the feeling of gloves; nor could she any better endure to have her hat tied. Her aunt bore with all these follies a while, and then deliberately ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... emotions, cheerful desire, and willing industry, are the parents of real greatness. If we look through the various departments of public and of intellectual action, we shall find the mark of inferiority upon every thing which has sprung from ennui. In philosophy, it might produce the follies of Cynic oddity, but not the sublime lessons of Pythagoras or Socrates. In poetry, it may produce effusions from persons of quality, devoid of wit, but it never could have pointed the satire of Pope. In the mechanic arts it may contrive a ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... which his conduct is connected with those actions. But biography follows him from his public exhibition into his private retreat, haunts him in his closet concealments, accompanies him through his house, where his desires, passions, irregularities, vices, virtues, foibles, and follies take their full swing—sits by his fireside—watches for his unsuspecting, unguarded moments,—catches and lays up all the ebullitions of his heart, when it is freed from all restraint by domestic confidence—scans all ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of twelve, when on stretches of prairie the invisible joinder of night and day is a majestic thing, the Moncrieff Follies—twenty-four of them, not counting two specialty acts and a pair of whistling Pierrots—burst forth into frolic with a terrific candle ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... She had always been so trusting and so innocent, but now she became queer and suspicious, wanting to know where I had been and what I had been doing, and whom my letters were from, and what I had in my pockets, and a thousand such follies. Day by day she grew queerer and more irritable, and we had causeless rows about nothing. I was fairly puzzled by it all. Sarah avoided me now, but she and Mary were just inseparable. I can see now how she ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... these writings have been printed to-day and are still wet from the press. It would be better if they were thrown on one side and rejected the day they appeared, as they must be after the lapse of a few years. They will then afford material for laughter as illustrating the follies of a ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of joy on that stricken face, the cry of rapture, the hand held to him, stirred him so deeply that his old love-longing seemed a boyish fantasy. "Oh, you have made me happy! You have blotted out all my follies and sufferings!" Then the poor tortured mind ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... down upon the ground, apparently struck by the tone in which Wilton spoke. He answered at length, however, raising his eyes with one of his gay looks, "After all, we are but mortals, my dear Wilton, and we must have our little follies and vices. I would not be an angel for the world, for my part; and besides—for so staid and sober a young man as you are—you forget that I have a duty to perform towards my father, to check him when I see him going wrong, and to put him in the right way; to afford ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... year 1801, ill health shed a gloom over his mind, to which the consciousness of approaching dissolution gave facilities and permanency. His contests with bad men had been frequent; and the frailties and follies of the world, and the instability of human friendship, which he had often experienced, haunted his mind at this time to a degree that was painful for those who loved and revered him, to witness. His medical friends tried the resources of their professional skill for ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots. Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic religion, remember they are the follies of four millions of human beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth and intelligence, who, if firmly united with this country, would set at defiance the power of France, and, if once wrested from their alliance ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... quickly. Besides being arrogant, he is also a dandy, and his clothes, though fine, are in such ridiculous taste that they attract the attention of the whole university.[21] But he does not mind that a bit, and it is useless to tell him of his follies.... He has acquired a gait which is simply intolerable. Could you only see him!" Such was Horn's first impression of his former comrade, but it is right to say that a few months later he could tell the same correspondent that they had not lost a friend in Goethe, who ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... and even auditors endowed with the highest musical intelligence, are reduced to the impossibility (if a new work is rendered, and they are hearing it for the first time) of recognizing the ravages perpetrated by the orchestral conductor—of discovering the follies, faults, and crimes he commits. If they clearly perceive certain defects of execution, not he, but his victims, are in such cases made responsible. If he has caused the chorus-singers to fail in taking up a point in ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... addition, badly written. It is a pity for prophets and poets to meddle with realities, instead of devoting themselves to futurity and poetry. George is happy in the intellectual wealth of Paris life, and quite perplexed at the perverseness and follies of the political cliques. He promises to write about the acquaintance of Lamenais and George Sand. I am well, but fully use the right of a ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... coming over us, I saw no more either of the Ship or the Crew. I rose by the Side of a large Timber, which I laid hold of, and got upon, heartily recommending my self to my Creator, and sincerely endeavouring to reconcile myself to my God, by an unfeigned Repentance of the Follies of my past Life, and by making a very solemn Resolution, that if his Mercy should preserve me from a Danger which none but his Omnipotence could draw me out of, to have, for the future, a strict Guard upon all my Thoughts, Words, and Actions, and to shew my Gratitude, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... "bitter craving to strike heavy blows" at he knew not what. What, indeed, could ever undo the indecency, the cruelty, the ugly revelations of these three months? The grossness of the common public, the weakness of friends, the solemn follies to which men are driven by hate or bigotry: these things might well have roused the angry laughter that lives in all quick and honest souls. But the satiric mood, when it appeared, soon vanished. He remembered the saying of Meredith concerning the spectacle of Bossuet over ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... silken ease, and mirth, and song, and dance, And festal follies in Etruscan halls— Bacchantic revels, when the sun went down, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... considered by some of his acquaintance as by himself; for they would now and then hint at her foibles: but this great liberty she also conceived to be the effect of most violent love, or most violent admiration: and such would have been her construction had they commended her follies—had they totally slighted, or ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... waste words in denying it, for it will avail thee nothing; I learnt not these matters from the neighbours; nay, she herself told them to me, complaining sore of thee. And besides that such toys beseem not a man of thine age, I may tell thee this much of her, that if ever I saw a woman averse to these follies, it is she; wherefore, for thine own credit and her comfort, I prithee desist therefrom and let her be in peace.' The gentleman, quicker of wit than the friar, was not slow to apprehend the lady's ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... all their pleasure-purchasing powers, return to their native sordid matter; where titles and honours are the disregarded reveries of an idle dream; and where that heavy virtue, which is the negative consequence of steady dulness, and those thoughtless, though often destructive follies which are unavoidable aberrations of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion as if they had ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... The error all women commit. Why can't you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... foolish. The greatest cordiality prevails between myself and the French gentlemen, and never before has there been such a friendly understanding between France and Prussia. My servants should always remember that, and commit no follies." ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... grown more and more difficult to trace its citizenship to any certain writer. There are some living who knew the Bohemians and even loved them, but there are increasingly few who were of them, even in the fond retrospect of youthful follies and errors. It was in fact but a sickly colony, transplanted from the mother asphalt of Paris, and never really striking root in the pavements of New York; it was a colony of ideas, of theories, which had perhaps never had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of human needs. At best, under such circumstances, you can only have right theories: practice for realising them in yourself is nowhere. It is no more possible for a man in the present day to retire from his fellows into the cave of his religion, and thereby leave the world of his own faults and follies behind, than it was possible for the eremites of old to get close to God in virtue of declining the duties which their very birth of human father and mother laid upon them. I do not deny that you and the eremite ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... downfall of France? How is it that her once so mighty armies have melted away, that her brave sons have so easily been conquered and disarmed? How is it that France, fallen powerless at the feet of her enemies, has frightened the world by the spectacle of the incredible, bloody, and savage follies of the Commune? Do not look for the causes of the downfall, humiliation, and untold miseries of France anywhere else than in the confessional. For centuries has not that great country obstinately rejected Christ? Has she ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... object was internally to reinvigorate the country for this new struggle. The salutary influence of adversity, and the clear, noble, and commanding mind of Hannibal, effected political and financial reforms. The oligarchy, which had filled up the measure of its guilty follies by raising a criminal process against the great general, charging him with having intentionally abstained from the capture of Rome and with embezzlement of the Italian spoil—that rotten oligarchy was, on the proposition of Hannibal, overthrown, and a democratic ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... they have real connection with welfare which determines the only tenor which they can have. The folkways about propriety and modesty are sometimes purely conventional and sometimes inherently real. Fashions, fads, affectations, poses, ideals, manias, popular delusions, follies, and vices must be included in the mores. They have characteral qualities and characteral effect. However frivolous or foolish they may appear to people of another age, they have the form of attempts to live well, to satisfy some interest, or to win some good. The ways of advertisers ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... vain to wish, for Time has ta'en his flight— For follies past be ceas'd the fruitless tears: Let follies past to future care incite. 15 Averse maturer judgements to obey Youth owns, with pleasure owns, the Passions' sway, But sage ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... will be so far from being able to mend matters by his casting about, as you call it, that he will find no occasions of doing any good: the ill company will sooner corrupt him, than be the better for him: or if notwithstanding all their ill company, he still remains steady and innocent, yet their follies and knavery will be imputed to him; and by mixing counsels with them, he must bear his share of all the blame that belongs wholly ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... not exist; to comprehend it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it, the most dangerous of follies. Open your window, Octave; do you not see the infinite? You try to form some idea of a thing that has no limits, you who were born yesterday and who will die to-morrow! This spectacle of immensity in every country in the world ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me this—this damned reminder of years and sins and follies—this hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself, I hazard a guess now, that you are in ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... to the pot and the pad, The fair it is over, the women are glad; For now the Wool-comber his follies he sees, And makes resolutions as staunch ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... down, I was saying the same thing to Pancks, who looked in here. We both agreed that to travel out of safe investments is one of the most dangerous, as it is one of the most common, of those follies which often deserve the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... what certain scientists do, but their follies are not chargeable to Science, nor to the whole body of Scientists. The ablest thinkers to-day, the deepest inquirers, look to the powers of the soul, and the new anthropology traces these powers to their localities ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... of ambition and vanity is not less bitter perhaps than the after-taste from sensual enjoyments. Listen to the confession of a man whose works, full as they are of beauties, are disfigured by so many impure allusions, that the author appears to have indulged, more than most others, in the giddy follies and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... disappointment will certainly kill the Duke de Champdoce. It seemed to him that after having so bitterly expiated the crimes and follies of his youth, he might hope to have his old age in peace and quiet, with a son who might cheer the loneliness of his desolate fireside. His countenance, as soon as he appeared before the Duchess, who had been expecting his return in an agony of anguish and suspense, told her at once that all hope ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... villages; when, at thy call, Uprises the great deep and throws himself Upon the continent, and overwhelms Its cities—who forgets not, at the sight Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by? Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath Of the mad unchained elements to teach Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate In these calm shades thy milder ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... prevent a recurrence of the follies of the past? Most assuredly not. Those who have reaped wisdom will have surrendered the speculative arena to others before the financial cycle rolls around, and history will repeat itself, notwithstanding the state never ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Balthazar, the less she dared to express her feelings. The glance, the gesture, the question and answer as it were of a pretty woman, so flattering to the man she loves, would they not be in her case mere humiliating speculation? A beautiful woman can be her natural self,—the world overlooks her little follies or her clumsiness; whereas a single criticising glance checks the noblest expression on the lips of an ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace of her gesture, gives timidity to her eyes and awkwardness to her whole bearing. She knows too well that to her alone the world condones no faults; she is denied ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... behind a gun-carriage on the main-deck, and addressing five hundred salt-sea sinners upon the psychological phenomena of the soul, and the ontological necessity of every sailor's saving it at all hazards. He enlarged upon the follies of the ancient philosophers; learnedly alluded to the Phiedon of Plato; exposed the follies of Simplicius's Commentary on Aristotle's "De Coelo," by arraying against that clever Pagan author the admired ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... abandoned them to "dreamers;" he laughed at all abstract theories and at the ingenuous minds which take them seriously. He held that all system was but logical infatuation; that the only pardonable follies were those which were frankly avowed; and that only a pedant could clothe his imagination in geometrical theories. In general, pedantry to his eyes was the least excusable of vices; he understood it to be ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... bloodily because somebody asserted or denied that a nation was the chosen one, or invading new continents, physical or metaphysical, because of legendary gold to be found therein, or in fact committing all its follies under the inspiration of myths—as in fact it has done. The Middle Ages are to Chesterton what King Alfred was to the Chartists and early Radicals. They believed that in his days England was actually governed on Chartist principles. So it happens that two Radical papers of the early part ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... prefer the splendor of wealth and the show of enjoyment to the simplicity of manners and the pure pleasures which result from it. If there is a town on the American continent where the English luxury displays its follies, it is New York. You will find here the English fashions: in the dress of the women you will see the most brilliant silks, gauzes, hats, and borrowed hair; equipages are rare, but they are elegant; the men have more ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... Eightfold Way lies free to all. I cannot ope it to them. Peace, joy, bliss, Supernal glory is it to those souls Who have put by the follies of their birth And sought its refuge. But though now I stand With lighted heart upon its blissful path, I can stretch out no hand to grasp their hands ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... poor book is full of saddest follies, Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies, With summer roses twined and ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... for that of which I am entirely ignorant?" "Who are you?" said I with a timorous bow, "for I really do not understand you." "I am," said he, "the unfortunate Juan de la Encina, whom, notwithstanding I have been here many years, ye mix up with all the follies which ye do and say during your lives; for all your lives long, whenever you hear of an absurdity, or commit one, you are in the habit of saying, 'Juan de la Encina could not have acted more like a fool;' or, 'that is ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... soft expression Thou hast taught to lovers' eyes, Faint denial, slow confession, Glowing cheeks and stifled sighs; By the pleasure and the pain, By the follies and the wiles, Pouting fondness, sweet disdain, Happy tears and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... people is absolutely uncontrolled, it is not so much the follies which it commits or the evil which it actually does that excites alarm, as the mischief which may thence result, since in such disorders it becomes possible for a tyrant to spring up. But with a wicked prince the contrary is the case; for we dread ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... who shall hold the secrets of the state. 3d Gentleman: And sanitation! Should we not declare For one of our own blood, whose sympathy Doth bind him to our customs which we love And so uproot the follies of the past? Quezox: Senores, we as serpents must be wise. To quick reveal all hidden in our hearts Would long delay the time of which we dream; Hence we must center now on Carpen's case Our every energy and clear the path Of one who ever wields a mighty pow'r, And his fat place on one we trust, ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... the hour of our calamity and peril to whom shall we resort for relief but to the God of our fathers? His omnipotent arm only can save us from the awful effects of our own crimes and follies—our own ingratitude and guilt toward our ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... having left them to the care of the dogs, was himself stretched under the shade of a rock a little way apart, and the princess sat knitting, with Prince at her feet, lying in wait for a snap at a great fly, for even he had his follies—Rosamond saw a poor woman come toiling up the hill, but took little notice of her until she was passing, a few yards off, when she heard her utter the dog's name in ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... passion much as they trifled with the soufflets at dinner; if both tried it to trifle away ennui much as they tried staking a Friedrich d'Or at Baden, this light, surface, fashionable, philosophic form of a passion they both laughed at, in its hot and serious follies, suited them admirably. Had it ever mingled a grain of bitterness in her ladyship's Souchong before dinner, or given an aroma of bitterness to her lover's Naples punch in the smoking room, it would have been out of all keeping with ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... confusion of terms), but "Hampstead in Sussex" would be a more accurate description of Crowborough proper. Never was a fine remote hill so be-villa'd. The east slope is all scaffold-poles and heaps of bricks, new churches and chapels are sprouting, and the many hoardings announce that Follies, Pierrots, or conjurors are continually imminent. Crowborough itself has shops that would not disgrace Croydon, and a hotel where a Lord Mayor might feel at home. Houses in their own grounds are commoner than cottages, and near ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... green-mantled maiden was goddess of his idolatry. He had been already flung from his romantic Pegasus, and was too happy at length to find himself with bones unbroken, though with his back on the ground. He was, besides, with all his whims and follies, a generous, kind-hearted youth, and was delighted to acknowledge so beautiful and amiable a relative, and to assure her in the warmest terms of his immediate affection and future protection, so soon as they should be extricated from their present situation. Smiles and tears mingled on ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... before. In the life of the well-known Scotsman, Adam Black, it is said that shortly after he went up to London he became a communicant in the Church to which he belonged. "I found," he says, "this step gave a stability to my character, and proved a defence from follies and vices, especially as a young man in London, entirely my own master, with no one to guide or ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... makes them but the more impetuous) but rather provide such suitable matches for them, as may make their lives comfortable; lest the crossing of those inclinations should precipitate them to commit those follies that may bring an indelible stain upon their families. The inclination of maids to marriage may be known by many symptoms; for when they arrive at puberty, which is about the fourteenth or fifteenth year of their age, then their natural purgations begin to flow; and the blood, which ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... "you look as if you had heard a knell that summoned you—what are you going to do?" "To tell all my follies to ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... p. 585.) and Anagrams (Vol. iv., p. 226).—Though we have ceased to practise these "literary follies," they are not without interest; and you will perhaps think it worth while to add ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... extremely prudent, ha, ha, ha! the world will say, Lard! who could have thought Mr Luckless had had so much prudence? This one action will overbalance all the follies of your life. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the two Hill brothers, the younger, Bertie, a fair-haired, bright-faced youngster, none too able to look after himself, but much inclined to follies of all degrees and sorts. But he was warm-hearted and devoted to his big brother, Humphrey, called "Hump," who had taken to ranching mainly with the idea of looking after his younger brother. ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... to hold the collective ownership of capital and the government of men in the Socialist Commonwealth; or if every citizen, retaining in his private capacity all the follies and vices that human flesh is heir to, shall still be vested in angelic attributes, whenever he sits as legislator or judge, or acts on the executive of a Socialist commission,—then this new Commonwealth is likely to prove a blessed substitute for the rule of the higher classes, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... serenity, probably because she was unacquainted with the Rochester type. Mr. Elton is certainly narrow, Mary Bennet extremely inferior; but their authoress only laughs at them softly, with a quiet tolerance and a good-natured sense of amusement at their follies. It was little wonder that Charlotte Bronte, who had at all times the courage of her convictions, could not and would not read Jane Austen's novels. "They have not got story enough for me," she boldly affirmed. "I don't want my blood curdled, but I like to have it stirred. Miss ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Warren had done a 'hideously cruel' thing deliberately, that would be one thing; what he has done is quite another. The God who made us put sex into the world, Warren didn't; and Warren only committed, in his—what is it?—forty-eighth year one of the follies that most boys dispose of in their teens. Be generous, Rachael, and forgive him. Give him ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... upon my life nigh spent, Nigh spent, although the stream as yet flows on, I more of follies than of sins repent, Less for offence than Love's shortcomings moan. With self, O Father, leave me not alone— Leave not with the beguiler the beguiled; Besmirched and ragged, Lord, take back thine own: A fool I bring thee to be ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... playful, gloomy, humorous, and tender quotation does not emanate from the heart of a monster, but from an unequalled lovesick soul confiding the innermost secrets of his mind to an inglorious helpmate, whose follies during the first years of their married life were a cruel ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... despondency, he complained of his state and wished he might die. In the cave of a morbid despair, he had to be met and subdued by the vision of God and by the still, small voice. He was just like other men. It was not, therefore, because he was above human follies and frailties, but because he was subject to them, that he is held up to us as an encouraging example of power that prevails in prayer. He laid hold of the Almighty Arm because he was weak, and he kept hold because to lose ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... abstraction, and they can scarcely conceive anything to have a real existence that may not become an object of their senses. Possessed of such sentiments and views, they are fully prepared in embracing all the follies and absurdities of superstition. They worship every thing they either love or fear, in order to procure the continuance of favours enjoyed, or to avert that resentment they may have reason to dread. As their knowledge of nature is altogether imperfect, and as many ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... have also developed an array of diseases, follies, vices, and crimes, which distinguish us from the other animals as markedly as ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... differ materially. But Seward's principles which rarely harmonised with those of the Radicals, now became more conspicuous and sharply defined because of the tactlessness and uncompromising spirit of Lincoln's successor. Besides, he was held responsible for the President's follies. To a convention filled with crutches, scarred faces, armless sleeves, and representatives of Andersonville and Libby Prisons, such an attitude seemed like a betrayal of his trust, and the resentment of the delegates, perhaps, was ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the sting of remembering troops of follies and errors, is best alleviated by the thought that they may make me better able to help those who have to go through like experiences, and who are so dear to me that I would willingly pay an even heavier price, to be of use. Depend ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... the small follies which provoked Beatrice's sarcasm, was by no means deficient in good sense or ability; his education had owed much to the counsels of Mr. Geoffrey Langford, whom he regarded with great reverence, and he ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a tone that he had never heard from his mother's lips before, "I can make all due allowance for the follies of a young man, but I say this to you: you should never have permitted this girl to cross your ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... and again while he spoke, and it seemed to her that she saw in him such great knowledge and tenderness as made her glad; and how he could understand the follies that men had done, and fathom what real meaning was in them, and disentangle all the threads. He smiled as she gazed at him, and answered as if ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... feel itself so immeasurably beneath Christ that you can not help longing to be more like him. It will create in your soul an inexpressible aspiration to draw further away from this old world with its trifles and its follies and to draw nearer to Christ, to be more like him in your inner life, and to act more like him in your outward life. If you look only at self and self-interest, your spiritual aspirations will fade away; but as you look away from ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... in drunken laughter of the follies of black and white humanity! mused Birnier. Yet what am I doing? At the crook of a dainty finger am I, too, to bow to an idol? Am I to pity zu Pfeiffer and these children?{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Savages! Good God, what ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... a victim to the Revolution, changed and sobered him. From an over-sensibility, he believed himself to be the cause of his brother's death on account of the part he had taken in hastening the Revolution, and he strove to atone for this mistake, as well as for his youthful follies, by a life of austerity and piety. While his letters testify his great affection for Madame Recamier, they are entirely free from those lover-like protestations and declarations of eternal fidelity so characterise of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ever reflected on the fact that, despite the horrors of the war, it is at least a big thing? I mean to say that in it one is brought face to face with realities. The follies, selfishness, luxury and general pettiness of the vile commercial sort of existence led by nine-tenths of the people of the world in peace time are replaced in war by a savagery that is at least more honest and outspoken. Look at it this way: in peace time ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... rose-tinted glasses. The eyes of age are dim behind smoke-clouded spectacles. My flaxen friend, you are not the angel I dreamed you, nor the exceptional sinner some would paint you; but under your feathers, just a woman—a bundle of follies and failings, tied up with some sweetness and strength. You keep a brougham I am sure you cannot afford on your thirty shillings a week. There are ladies I know, in Mayfair, who have paid an extravagant price for ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... rather than by his orders; often without his knowledge, and sometimes against his will. Rigid as that will was, it was forced to bend to the anti-Popery storm which swept over the British Islands after the abdication of King James; but the vices and follies of his times ought no more be laid to the personal account of William than of James or Louis, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... lad. There shall be no back reckoning between you and me. You have been mixed up with a sight of follies, but you can over-get all that. You take after me in looks. Up-sitting and down-sitting, you are my son. You come of a good kind; you have a kind heart and plenty of dint;[Dint, energy.] now, then, make a fresh start, Harry. Oh, my dear, dear son!" The father's eyes ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... ways—He will take us all the rest of the way, I speak from experience. For amongst many things this happened to me: at a certain stage, after my third conversion on the hill, He caused my former thoughts, desires, and follies to go away from me! It was as though He had sent a veil between me and such thoughts of my heart and mind as might not be pleasing to Him, so that they disappeared from my knowledge and ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... arranged to hide a well-whitened patch over the eye, his handsome legs correctly poised, and his gifted fingers about to draw divine music from the silvered gridiron which was his lyre. His divine attributes were described, as well as his little follies and failings, among which were his weakness for photography and flute-playing, his attempts to run a newspaper, and his fondness for the society of the Muses; which latter slap produced giggles and blushes among the girl-graduates, and much mirth among the stricken youths; ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... is now coming when Love must be gone, Tho' he never abandoned me yet. Acknowledge our friendship, our passion disown, Our follies ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... Empire was probably the worst. All others have displayed compensating virtues. A high sense of personal honour has counterbalanced a low standard of public justice. An ennobling patriotism may partly repair economic follies. The miseries of the people are often concealed by the magnificence of the army. The laxity of morals is in some degree excused by the elegance of manners. But the Dervish Empire developed no virtue except courage, a quality more admirable than rare. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... while blessed with worldly abundance, showed no desire to initiate the extravagances or the follies of European aristocracy. The example she set was soon followed, and her pleasant expression and manners, retaining the ready responsiveness of youth, while adding the wide sympathies of experience, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... that the gods were no examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so that philosophers like Varro could pour ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... remember; and, whenever that disclosure was made to them, they must have been rejoiced to think, that this memory of his, instead of being, as it might well have been, a dangerous garner of severe judgments and fairly-grounded prejudices, was a magic mirror, in which their follies and foibles were hardly at all reflected, and only kindly reminiscences and ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... of the view from the summit would be looked for in vain, not because the poet was insensible to it, but, on the contrary, because the impression was too overwhelming. His whole past life, with all its follies, rose before his mind; he remembered that ten years ago that day he had quitted Bologna a young man, and turned a longing gaze toward his native country; he opened a book which then was his constant companion, the Confessions of St. Augustine, and his eye fell on the passage in the tenth chapter, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... about his friends and relations, all of which he answers very fully; and the duke expressing some surprise that he should apply for relief in his misfortunes to any but his own family, who were so well able to assist him, he replied, he had disobliged them by some follies in his youth, and had not seen them for some years, but was now returning to them. Many more questions did the duke, and a lady who was present, ask him; all of which he answered ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... this kind of writing. The one called The Hye Way to the Spyttell hous took the form of a dialogue between Copland and the porter of St. Bartholomew's, and turns upon the various kinds of beggars and impostors, with a running commentary upon the vices and follies that bring men to poverty. Iyll of Brentford, the second of these compositions, is a somewhat different production. It recounts the legacies left by a certain lady, but the humour, though to the taste of the times, was ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... the beginning of time, and have been urged against any and every demand for popular liberty. A want of capacity for self-government—freedom will be only licentiousness—and out of the possession of rights will grow only the practice of follies and wrongs. This is the argument, in brief, applied to every step of gradual emancipation on the part of the male, and now by him applied to the female struggling to reach the common platform. Should the American male, in the van of human ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... convinces you without delay that it is the property of an unmitigated blackguard. Reader, you see the ready Ikey, whom we have met oftener than once in this short history. Would you know more? Be satisfied to learn, that he exists upon the follies and the vices of our high nobility. He has made good the promises of his childhood and his youth. He rolls in riches, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... supreme divinity, and he first speaks: "How sorely mortals blame the Gods!" It is indeed an alienated discordant time like the primal fall in Eden. But why this blame? "For they say that evils come from us, the Gods; whereas they, through their own follies, have sorrows beyond what is ordained." The first words of the highest God concern the highest problem of the poem and of human life. It is a wrong theology, at least a wrong Homeric theology, to hold that the Gods are the cause of human ills; these are the consequences of man's own actions. Furthermore, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... conscious or wandering, the one thought of his wasted year seemed to be crushing him. It was a curious contrast between poor Mr. Fuller's absence of regret for a quarter of a century's supineness, and this lad's repentance for twelve months' idleness. That his follies had been guileless in themselves might be the very cause that his spirit had such power of repentance. His admiration of Lady Tyrrell had been burnt out, and had been fancy, not heart, and no word of it passed his lips, far less of the mirth with ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... himself much beyond the little strength that remained to him, and in the spring he gladly turned his face homeward. His resignation of his editorship was now made absolute, and, with greatly diminished income (his expenses in consequence of his son's follies had been heavy), he prepared to leave the house which had been so long his, and seek some new abiding-place. But his release was at hand. In August, he went to Milton-Lockhart, to the kind care of his brother's household, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... him since the return of peace caused him to sheath his sword, and tempted him to commit the folly, as an old bachelor, of leading an idle life. Married, and with a family, he would have had them to interest him; but, as it was, he had only to think of his own aches and ills, and, perhaps, past follies; and to brood over what he called the neglects he had experienced from his ungrateful country. No man on board, perhaps, was so anxious as he was to have a skirmish with the rover, but he was not aware of the dreadful odds which would be opposed to him, and of the too probable fate ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... while in thy early years, How prodigal of time! Misspending all thy precious hours, Thy glorious youthful prime! Alternate follies take the sway, Licentious passions burn; Which tenfold force gives Nature's law, That man ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the Bourse, with all its gambling, swindling, and hoaxing, its cheats and its dupes; the Medical Profession, and the quacks who ruled it, alternately; the Stage, and the cant that was prevalent there; the Fashion, and its thousand follies and extravagances. Robert Macaire had all these to exploiter. Of all the empire, through all the ranks, professions, the lies, crimes, and absurdities of men, he may make sport at will; of all except of a certain ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... whole development that my conduct was regulated according to the more or less close mental and outward connection in which I stood with her. The storm and stress period, during which my effervescent youthful spirits led me into all sorts of follies, was the only time in my life in which this close connection threatened to be loosened. Yet Fate provided that it should soon be welded more firmly than ever. When she died, a beloved wife stood by my side, but she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Moriae or Praise of Folly, which Erasmus wrote at about the same period (1511), the vices and follies of the Church were lashed with a mockery still more unsparing, we have to note, first, that the great scholar drew his picture less from England than from the Continent; next, that it had no injurious effect on his appointment to the professorship of Greek at Cambridge. The patronage extended ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... suggestions with much modesty, admitting that they are vague and uncertain and (what it is even more important to notice) mythical in their terms; but it seems to me that, for all that, they are an admirable counterblast to prevalent follies. When we hear that there is, animating the whole universe, an Elan vital, or general impulse toward some unknown but single ideal, the terms used are no less uncertain, mythical, and vague, but the suggestion ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... consists of the high clergy, the parliamentary judges, and such of the nobility as think they ought to form a separate order." This is the party which offers resistance to follies and errors, but with follies and errors almost equally great. In the beginning "the prelates,[2129] instead of conciliating the cures, kept them at a humiliating distance, affecting distinctions, exacting respect," and, in their own chamber, "ranging themselves ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Shylock millionaires, the owners of the tables—these Princes of Hades who alone profit by the wreck of their fellow-creatures, are perfectly content to fatten, like over-gorged leeches, on the weaknesses and follies of their prey. What matters it to them, the misery and unhappiness of others, so long as they thrive? What matter the means, so long ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... but would not undertake the cure," p. 364. This was behaving with a tolerable degree of prudence and good sense. But let not the bibliomaniac imagine that it is my wish to degrade honest old Elias Ashmole, by the foregoing delineation of his weaknesses and follies. The ensuing entries, in the said Diary, will more than counterbalance any unfavourable effect produced by its precursors; and I give them with a full conviction that they will be greedily devoured by those who have been lucky enough to make ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... it was as likely to go wrong as right. Before your son was born, this unhappy rival, poor in hopes as in wealth, had become desperate; and the mother of your child sank a victim to her ceaseless regrets, at her own want of faith as much as for his follies." ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... truth, may seem clear to us now, and advanced and unfettered; but how different will it appear a few years, a few centuries later! Had Louis XVI. done what we should have done—we who now are aware of what had been the right thing to do—had he frankly renounced all the follies of royal prerogative, and loyally adopted the new truth and loftier justice that had sprung into being, then should we to-day be admiring his genius. And the king himself, perhaps—for he was not a foolish man, or wicked—may have for one instant beheld his own situation with the ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... alone in appreciating his genius; and though, with the contempt of youth for the follies of middle-age, they patronised him among themselves, they did not fail to look upon it as a feather in their caps if he had chosen a time when only one was there to be particularly wonderful. Cronshaw never came to Gravier's. For the last ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Sar, surpasses all mankind, In thee, O king! no blemish do I find. The Queen of Heaven favor seeks from thee, I come with love, and prostrate bend the knee. My follies past, I hope thou wilt forgive, Alone I love thee, with thee move and live; My heart's affections to thee, me have led, To woo thee to thine Ishtar's marriage bed. O kiss me, my beloved! I adore Thee! Hear me! I renounce the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... he said, as the waiter came up. Astrardente nodded, and there was silence while the man brought the cordial. The Duca lived by an invariable rule, seeking to balance the follies of his youth by excessive care in his old age; it was long, indeed, since he had taken a glass of brandy in the morning. He swallowed it quickly, and the stimulant produced its effect immediately; he readjusted his eyeglass, ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... appeared well pleased with the proposal, and the king, who had listened attentively to the recital of the follies into which Philip had fallen in consequence of listening to evil advice, exclaimed: "Similar counsellors, by violating my edict, wellnigh brought me into like terms with my subjects, wherefrom ensued the late troubles; but now, thank God, He has opened my eyes to discern what their meaning ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Rupert also. But I hope the Prince will not be back yet, for he will be wanting me to go to Court again, and for this, in truth, I have no inclination, and, moreover, it cannot be done without much expense for clothes, and I have no intention to go into expenses on follies or gew-gaws, or to trench upon the store of money that I had from you, ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... shall be very glad to have you keep me in countenance. We will discourse cynically upon the follies of the day ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... than the vast majority of men in the army. It was the airs he gave himself, on the strength of being able to indulge in an expenditure such as no one else in the regiment could attempt—by keeping three or four race horses in training, and other follies—that had more to do with his unpopularity, than his constant talk about the peerage he was so ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... sort, and played with his little boy occasionally. You may suppose she was not a very staid personage, for she was at this time only seventeen years old, and as I was more than twenty-seven, I occasionally checked her wildness, while I could not help laughing at her graceful follies. She should have been born of a French mother and a Spanish father, for she was gay and volatile as the summer insect, and yet she had much depth of feeling, and was full of romantic tenderness, with sometimes a haughty ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... which he is weeping all over his already tear-stained copy of the Peace Treaty and calling it the Tragedy of Versailles, whereas compared to the Treaty of Peace which you might call the Tragedy of Brest-Litovsk, Mawruss, this here Versailles Treaty of Peace is a Follies of 1919 with just ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... aught is done without thy wise control, On earth, or sea, or round the ethereal pole, Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind, Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind, Thou curb'st th' excess; confusion, to thy sight, Moves regular; th' unlovely scene is bright. Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings To one apt harmony the strife of things. One ever-during law still binds the whole, Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner's soul. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... children, holding up for his acceptance great bunches of irises and scarlet poppies and sweet white narcissus from the mountain slopes. His passion for wild flowers was affectionately tolerated by the people, as one of the little follies which sit gracefully on very wise men. If anyone less universally beloved had filled his house with weeds and grasses they would have laughed at him; but the "blessed Cardinal" could afford ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... analysed that life as it actually exists, he spent the first half of his days in studying society under all its aspects; recoiling from no experience, practising, in the character of an observer, even vice as well as virtue; drawing a lesson from his own frailties, and making a study of his own follies. He dissipated his fortune in premeditated prodigality, and terminated a studious opulence in excessive poverty; living on the miserable salary of a copyist, when in idea he was governing the world. In the estimation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... not look well; it would not be convenable. If she dresses "loudly," with peculiar hats and a suspicious complexion, she must take the consequences. She must be careful (if she is unknown) not to attempt to copy the follies of well-known fashionable women. What will be forgiven to Mrs. Well Known Uptown will never be forgiven to Miss Kansas. Society in this respect is very unjust—the world is always unjust—but that is a part of the truth of etiquette which is to be remembered; it is founded ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... wide-hearted sympathy, that he laughs at what they laugh at, that he has a kindly spirit of enjoyment, with not a morsel of mysticism in his composition; that he pities and loves the poor, and jokes at the follies of the great, and that he addresses all in a perfectly sincere and manly way. To be greatly successful as a professional humorist, as in any other calling, a man must be quite honest, and show that ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... presence of a professor or deputy, till they come to dress themselves, which is at five years old. And if it be found that these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies practised by the chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the country. Thus, the young ladies there are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... insignificant pages do we ever see of the misdeeds, tyrannies and acts of petty and contemptuous meanness so great a man was guilty of! Why should authors and orators be so reluctant to tell the truth of a great man's follies and crimes, seeing with what convenience and fluency they will lie for him? We contend, and shall contend, that a truly great man cannot be guilty of a small act, and that one contemptible or atrocious manifestation ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Saviour, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine! For Thee all the follies of sin I resign; My gracious Redeemer, my Saviour art Thou; If ever I loved Thee, my Saviour, ...
— Morning Bells • Frances Ridley Havergal
... hills, and made for the town; expecting perhaps to have breakfast with Master Huckaback, and Ruth, to help and encourage us. This little maiden was now become a very great favourite with me, having long outgrown, no doubt, her childish fancies and follies, such as my mother and Annie had planted under her soft brown hair. It had been my duty, as well as my true interest (for Uncle Ben was more and more testy, as he went on gold-digging), to ride thither, now and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... who took to flirting early in her matrimonial career, but was saved from coming to grief by the decisive action of a stern husband. The book contains a capital lesson for the Girl of the Period, whose follies are satirized in it ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... out to him the real truth that was in her. "And whose thoughts did you speak when you and I were on the braes of Loughlinter? Am I wrong in saying that change is easy to you, or have I grown to be so old that you can talk to me as though those far-away follies ought to be forgotten? Was it so long ago? Talk of love! I tell you, sir, that your heart is one in which love can have no durable hold. Violet Effingham! There may be a dozen Violets after her, and you will be none the worse." Then she walked away from him to the window, and he stood still, dumb, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... particularly where the national councils may be warped by some strong passion or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed. What has not America lost by her want of character with foreign nations; and how many errors and follies would she not have avoided, if the justice and propriety of her measures had, in every instance, been previously tried by the light in which they would probably appear to the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the mighty past! Why, Miss Betty," Brown's tone is sad and severe, "in my young days young people never thought of amusement. We had no time for such follies." ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor |
