"Folly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... justice, and in the power of a man, whose perseverance was equal to every occasion, and in whom passions, of which revenge was not the weakest, entirely supplied the place of principles. She was compelled, once more, to acknowledge, that it would be folly, and not fortitude, any longer to dare his power; and, resigning all hopes of future happiness with Valancourt, she determined, that, on the following morning, she would compromise with Montoni, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... that Miss Jewsbury has judged well in her determination of going to India. Europe is at present a melancholy spectacle, and these two Islands are likely to reap the fruit of their own folly and madness, in becoming, for the present generation, the two most unquiet and miserable spots upon the earth. May you, my dear friend, find the advantage of the poetic spirit in raising you, in thought at least, above the contentious clouds! Never before did I feel such reason to be grateful ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Mr Lorton," she replied, as suave as ever.—"But, you will think differently by-and-by, and thank me for acting as I have done! Your foolish fancy for my daughter will soon wear off; and you will live to laugh at your present folly!" ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... "This is mere folly!" the elder sister said, petulantly; as she rose and proceeded to put straight a few of the things about the room. "I had hoped better things of you, Carry. I tell you of an important step I have taken in my life, and you bring out a lot of tattle and nonsense. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... no delusions regarding the seriousness of his plight. Assaulting an officer was a madness he should have avoided above all else, and because he had yielded to that madness he expected to pay more dearly than he was paying old Sudden for his folly of the early summer. It seemed to him that the rest of his life would be spent in paying for his own blunders. It was like a nightmare that held him struggling futilely to attain some vital object; for how could he ever ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... on his knees and stuck out his elbows with extreme angularity. In his heart he was raving at his idiotic folly at thus bearding these lions,—indisputably they WERE lions,—but he had to go through with it now. Heaven send, his breath, which was already getting a trifle spasmodic, did not suddenly give out. He fixed his eye on the face of the fat man with the chins, and spoke in a low, impressive voice. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... measure would be the first to lose their head so soon as the result proved the madness of their procedure. With an army entirely composed of men like those of the guard and commanded by the most able general— Alexander or Caesar, if they could act with such folly—one could answer for nothing; much more therefore in the circumstances in which the army of Spain is placed. In war everything depends on opinion—opinion as to the enemy, opinion as to one's own soldiers. When a battle is lost, the difference between the conquered and the conqueror ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... known to everybody from time immemorial. To suggest that there was yet another world belonging to our system outside the path of the furthest known planet would have seemed to most people like pure folly. Since then, we have grown quite accustomed to the discovery of a fresh small world or two every year, and we have even had another large planet (Neptune), still more remote than Herschel's Uranus, added to the list ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... would have sacrificed everything for them, and yet, in order to do as others, would sacrifice them without hesitation. To whom? Why, to the unknown god. In every epoch Abraham has led Isaac to the funeral pile. And his magnificent folly still remains an example for ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... Folly in having so often met you here, without pursuing the Laws of Nature, and exercising her command—But I resolve e'er we part now, to know who you are, where you live, and what kind of Flesh and Blood your Face is; therefore ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... for those we love would be too easy a thing; to suffer for them and with them—would not that be better? And I do suffer with you in my heart—do you not believe it? But of what good is it? it cannot remove one pang or lighten your burthen for a single moment. This is folly, you will say; well, perhaps it is; you know I like to be sentimental sometimes, and I am in just such a mood to- night. Is it folly too to say, that after all the years since we parted, I still miss you? and yet so it is. Sometimes sitting ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Louis Napoleon drew from them the utmost profit. A certain fierce, blind Socialism had spread among the poorest of the rural classes in the centre and south of France. In these departments there were isolated risings, accompanied by acts of such murderous outrage and folly that a general terror seized the surrounding districts. In the course of a few days the predatory bands were dispersed, and an unsparing chastisement inflicted on all who were concerned in their misdeeds; but the reports sent to Paris were too serviceable ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... if that is not your folly. You are busy here and there. You go to work six days in the week. You are passionately in earnest about amusing yourself. You do a thousand and one decent and respectable things. But while you are busy ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... more limited, indeed, but far more idealized! What confident perception of the future powers of his instrument must have presided over his voluntary renunciation of an empiricism, so widely spread, that another would have thought it a mistake, a folly, to have wrested such great thoughts from their ordinary interpreters! How sincerely should we revere him for this devotion to the Beautiful for its own sake, which induced him not to yield to the general propensity to scatter ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... It was folly to go out penniless—unarmed; he had learned that lesson in the East and his condition then had been affluence compared to this. He was doing the one thing that it was possible for him to do in the circumstances—to get money enough to ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... undoubtedly an excellent cavalry officer, but he had too much swagger, which spoils many a good soldier. Lasalle, too, was a very dashing leader, but he ruined himself with wine and folly. Now I, Etienne Gerard, was always totally devoid of swagger, and at the same time I was very abstemious, except, maybe, at the end of a campaign, or when I met an old comrade-in-arms. For these reasons ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... won me, but something nobler and rarer than beauty: it was her perfect nature. The more faulty we are ourselves, the more fondly we cling to a good woman. But I don't want to say hard things, Augusta. Pray let us put all this folly aside at once and for ever. You took your course in the past, and it has landed you in a very prosperous position. Let me take mine in the present, and let us be ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... esteem what they wish they could esteem, or to despise what they wish they could despise. It is not possible to force the eternal barrier of truth and justice. The inward master, called reason, intimately checks the attempt with absolute power, and knows how to set bounds to the most impudent folly of men. Though vice has for many ages reigned with unbridled licentiousness, virtue is still called virtue; and the most brutish and rash of her adversaries cannot yet deprive her of her name. Hence ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... recognize it. Thus, some people may be tempted to finance our extra military effort by cutting economic assistance. But at the very time when the economic threat is assuming menacing proportions, to fail to strengthen our own effort would be nothing less than reckless folly! ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... honest Student, and Modest Christian Philosopher, be counted, & called a Coniurer? Shall the folly of Idiotes, and the Mallice of the Scornfull, so much preuaile, that He, who seeketh no worldly gaine or glory at their handes: But onely, of God, the threasor of heauenly wisedome, & knowledge of pure veritie: Shall he (I say) in the meane space, be robbed and spoiled of his honest name ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... colour of my cheeks at the discovery. No doubt I was already the laughing-stock of the whole inn. What folly! What a young vixen! Oh, what's to be done? Pay my bill and sneak off at once to the next town; but how pass through the grinning line of boots, and waiter, and chambermaid, and ironically respectful landlord and landlady, in ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... train went to London, but there was a connection by which one could reach Liverpool at about four in the morning. It was now eight o'clock, and Foster walked up and down the platform, growling at his folly, for a minute or two. Then he ascertained that there was another train for Liverpool in half an hour which would arrive at noon, and sending the car away, waited about the office until he could get tickets. After all, he might find Daly ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... sense of smell was the detecting agent in this case. Nor could it have been the sense of touch; the mother could not have possibly familiarized herself with the individual form of each puppy in so short space of time. It is folly to suppose that each young one had a distinctive taste or flavor; hence the sense of taste must also be eliminated. Thus, by exclusion, there remains but one faculty, the faculty of computing, to account for the ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... this letter! In his editorial comment thereon he said that he did not know which of two biblical injunctions to follow: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be thought like unto him"; or "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit". I replied by pointing out a third text which the Reverend Doctor had possibly overlooked: "He that calleth his neighbor a fool shall be in danger of hell-fire." But the Reverend Doctor ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Newfoundland dog, to the end of the voyage. The friends of this lady—the first woman who descended the great rivers of the West in a steamboat—used every argument they could offer to dissuade her from undertaking what was considered a dangerous experiment, an absolute folly. The good wife, however, clung to her husband, and accepted the risks, preferring to be drowned or blown up, as her friends predicted, rather than to desert her better- half in his hour of trial. A few weeks would decide ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... could prove useful, in case of their being forced on shore, were put in. Muskets and ammunition were also provided, and everything was ready, when the men came aft and pointed out to Philip that there was plenty of money on board, which it was folly to leave, and that they wished to carry as much as they could away with them. As this intimation was given in a way that made it evident they intended that it should be complied with, Philip did not refuse; but resolved, in his own mind, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that I had been held a prisoner or that Miss Ryder had a hand in the night's work; and I wished a thousand times over that I had not known it myself. The old saying, worn to a frazzle with repetition, came to me with new force, and I was sadly alive to the fact that where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... of the aristocrats of the Exchange. When I was fourteen, he wrote to my father to send me over, as he meant to make me his heir. My father was a thorough merchant. I was packed up and sent across. In New York I soon became an accomplished scapegrace, was up to every species of folly, and kept race-horses at an age when German boys eat bread and butter, and play with tops in the streets. I had my favorite danseuses and cantatrices, and so bullied my servants, both white and black, that ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... furthest corner, completely hemmed in by a crowd of furious Arabs, were three young Englishmen, whose faces plainly showed how well they understood the dangerous position into which their own impudence and folly had enticed them. ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... so violent a convulsion of laughter at the idea of such absurd folly as Beechnut had described, that he tumbled off the bannisters, but fortunately he fell in, towards the stairs, and was very little hurt. He came down the stairs to Malleville, and as Beechnut returned in a few minutes with the whip, they ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... divine law given to the Jews, respecting their magistrates; and if so, they would not miss of sufficient accusation against him. But here infinite wisdom shone forth, in giving such an answer as declared their wisdom to be but folly, and at once disappointed all their malicious hopes; an answer which left Caesar's claim unresolved, as to any positive determination whether it belonged to him or not. The question is in direct terms. Our Lord does not directly answer to the question, in the terms proposed ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... couples go on until they are cold couples, and the grave has closed over their folly and indifference. Loss of name, station, character, life itself, has ensued from causes as slight as these, before now; and when gossips tell such tales, and aggravate their deformities, they elevate their hands and eyebrows, and call each other to witness what a ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... head not very well, and my body out of order by last night's drinking, which is my great folly. To church, and Mr. Mills made a good sermon; so home to dinner. My wife and I all alone to a leg of mutton, the sawce of which being made sweet, I was angry at it, and eat none, but only dined upon the marrow bone that we had beside. To church in the afternoon, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... either good or harm. And let not any imagine this to be a slight matter, and that it deserves not to have so great weight laid upon it, till he has considered what evil is implied in it, and the bad effects which follow from it. It is perhaps true, that they who are addicted to this folly would choose to confine themselves to trifles and indifferent subjects, and so intend only to be guilty of being impertinent: but as they cannot go on for ever talking of nothing, as common matters will not afford a sufficient ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... and often isolated him even from his friends and companions. He brooded upon supposed wrongs, and created in his soul strong likes and dislikes. What is worse, he took no pains to control this temperament; and at last it mastered him, drove him into every kind of folly and rashness, and made him appear worse ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... the din of all things fell and vile, Hate's yell, and envy's hiss, and folly's bray, Remember me; and with an unforced smile See riches, baubles, flatterers, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... must be the necessity of changing the system of Irish government? To dream that you could destroy the power of the old masters without finding new, and that having invited the nation to speak you could continue to ignore the national sentiment was and is the very height of political folly, and the longer the dream is persisted in the ruder will be the awakening. Surely the stupidest fatalism is far more truly to be ascribed to those who insist that Ireland was eternally predestined to turmoil, confusion, and torment; ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... have thought so," said Grandfather. "Yet only two or three years elapsed, before the folly of some misguided men caused another mustering of soldiers. This affair was called Shays' War, because a Captain Shays was the chief ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the whole annoying, and yet really amusing, performance by giving me the most minute particulars of the route ahead, and parting in the best of humor. To lose one's temper on these occasions, or to attempt to forcibly break away, is quickly discovered to be the height of folly; they themselves are brimful of good humor, and from beginning to end their countenances are wreathed in smiles; although they fairly detain me prisoner the while, they would never think of attempting any real injury to either myself or ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... to the gunwale, the Japanese was using the boathook to push the craft apart. A final shove widened the distance to six or eight feet. The jump was impossible. Even if the boats had been nearer together it would have been folly to attempt ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... remarks in the same tract: "Now, to be sure, we Christians are not so utterly devoid of all reason and sense as the Jews consider us, who take us to be nothing but crazy geese and ducks, unable to perceive or notice what folly it is to believe that God is man, and that in one Godhead there are three distinct persons. No, praise God, we perceive indeed that this doctrine cannot and will not be received by reason. Nor are we in need of any sublime Jewish reasoning to ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... me, scrapping briskly, as a boy and girl do who have grown up together. I stumped along after and reflected on the folly of mankind in general, and that of Allen G. Cummings in particular. That careful, mature bachelor had seen this lustrous young creature blossom to her present perfection; he'd no doubt offered her safe and sane attention, when she came ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... to make a knot at every foot?" thought the lad, as he severely abused himself for his folly and ignorance during the intervals of struggling hard to get, if only a few feet up, towards the window, but toiling in vain and only growing hotter and more exhausted in spite ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... the foreign office, the weak savage at the party headquarters, feud and indolence and folly. It is all one world. This and that are all one thing. The spites of London and the mutilations of Macedonia. The maggots that eat men's faces and the maggots that rot their minds. Rot their minds. Rot their ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... good," said the Indian to the dog. "Can't you understand that the evil spirit which you have in your body will be certain to make you commit some folly?" ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... of little use. The Emperor, moreover, is even now raising a new army from the distant provinces, and will soon send against us a force ten times as great as any we have yet seen. There being no hope of victory, further fighting would be folly. Lead, therefore, your daughter to the palace. Throw yourself upon the mercy of the throne. You must accept cheerfully the fate the gods ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... as he looks up at the starry sky, something says to him: 'You can bear all these agonies of privation, loss of life, loss of love,—what are they? If the tie between you is what you thought, neither life nor death, neither folly nor sin, can keep her forever from you.' Would that one could always feel so! But I am weak. Then comes impulse, it thirsts for some immediate gratification; I yield, and plunge into any happiness since I cannot obtain her. Then comes quiet again, with the stars, and ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... may, these discoverers of new countries ruined and exhausted themselves by their own folly and civil strife, failing absolutely to rise to the greatness expected of men who accomplish such wonderful things. Meanwhile it was decided by common agreement among the colonists to send their representatives to the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... naething better to do, ye can be aye sticking in a tree; it'll aye be growin' when ye are sleeping.' There is an ash-tree growing here that my mother planted with her own hands at threescore and ten. What agnostic folly to think that tree has outlived her who ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... the big factories and the little factory-workers in Tokyo and Osaka, after having listened to the most ambitious of Japan's industrial leaders, I shall leave the country convinced of the folly of the talk that white labor cannot compete with Japanese labor. I believe indeed that the outlook is encouraging for manufacturing in the Mikado's empire, but I do not believe that this development is to be regarded as a menace to English or American industry. ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... rifle and issued from camp alone, feeling so reduced in strength that my mind involuntarily reverted to the extremity I had been brought to by my youthful folly in coming into such a desert waste. About three hundred yards from the camp I saw two teal ducks; I levelled my rifle, and handsomely decapitated one. This was a temptation to my constancy; appetite and conscientiousness had a long strife as to the disposal of the booty. I reflected ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... could possibly be perpetrated. It is simply a foolish interference with the natural progress of civilisation and prosperity. If it is desirable that the Welsh should talk English, it is monstrous folly to encourage them in a loving fondness for their old language. Not only the energy and power, but the intelligence and music of Europe have come mainly from Teutonic sources, and this glorification of everything Celtic, if it were not pedantry, would ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... precious a creature to breathe the same air with other creatures of God's making. He must needs have a separate parlour to himself! And this sinful, detestable vanity of ours must cost the lives of so many good, brave, happy, and useful persons. Oh, hell itself must mock at our folly!" ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... the Bauddha system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides, like the walls of a well dug in sandy soil. It has, in fact, no foundation whatever to rest upon, and hence the attempts to use it as a guide in the practical concerns of life are mere folly.—Moreover, Buddha by propounding the three mutually contradictory systems, teaching respectively the reality of the external world, the reality of ideas only, and general nothingness, has himself made it ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... my so doing; I say enough, that I may remain by my own experience, not esteeming much of others prating, because it is concealed in my knowledge, Seeing having alwaies the preheminence before Hearing, and Reason hath the praise before Folly; Wherefore I now say, that all visible, tangible things are made of the Spirit of Mercury, which excels all earthly things of the whole world, all things being made out of it, having their Off-spring only from it; for all is ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... to the Mysteries, and in the morality of the Order, incited to act bravely in war, taught the great truths of the immortality of the soul and a future state, solemnly enjoined not to neglect the worship of the Deity, nor the practice of rigid morality; and to avoid sloth, contention, and folly. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... until he make a man laugh at folly, and, at length, ashamed to laugh at himself, which he cannot avoid without avoiding the folly; who, while "circum praecordia ludit," giveth us to feel how many headaches a passionate life bringeth us to; who when all ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... cheer than has wine," he said. "I cannot comprehend my folly in wanting to leave it. To live one's own master on one's own land, that is the only life!" He looked back at the yeomen with a sudden smile. "Noise!" he ordered. "Cheer again! it expresses the state of my feelings. And let your horn sound merrily, Kendred, that ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... never seen it, so if it fell into her hands she could not trace it to her. Once more she practiced the back-handed scrawl. Then, with an energy born of the remorse which was to serve as a continual penance for her folly, she wrote: ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... still crying when the cab drew up. The house-key had been forgotten; there was nothing for it but to ring for the landlady, and to stand in the wind till she came down. The old woman was not so astonished as Maurice had expected; but she was very wroth at the folly of the proceeding, and did not ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... of Ghent. You came hither to do, if occasion offers, some knightly deeds, and feeling pity for the starving people here you offer them knightly aid, and will fight for them as long as there is a chance that fighting may avail them, but beyond that it would be folly indeed to go; and when you see the day hopelessly lost, you and your men-at-arms may well try to make your way out of the crowd of combatants, and to ride whither you will. I say not to return here, for that would indeed be an act of folly, since ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... appreciation of her grew in him. If in the bright and silken distance he had not seen his Bishop it might have glowed into a cordiality of speech with his distinctive individual stamp on it. But he saw his Bishop, his ceinture tightened on him, and he uttered only the trite saying about the folly of counting on ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... this was for a girl, a mere wilful child! And the man had whole cityfuls of people to do his basest bidding—girls, women! Why in the name of passionate folly THIS one in particular? asked the little man, and scowled at the world, and licked his parched lips with a blackened tongue. It was the way of the master, and that was all he knew. Just because she ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... know nothing.' What a wonderful argument, in itself an obvious refutation of the charge. 'It must have been this, because I do not know what it was.' You are the only person hitherto discovered who knows that which he does not know. You so far surpass all others in folly, that whereas philosophers of the most keen and penetrating intellect assert that we should not trust even the objects that we see, you make statements about things which you have never seen or heard. If Pontianus still lived and you were to ask him what the ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... acknowledged the sovereign necessity of prayer. In my awe, in my rapture, all my thoughts seemed enlarged and illumed and exalted. I prayed—all my soul seemed one prayer. All my past, with its pride and presumption and folly, grew distinct as the form of a penitent, kneeling for pardon before setting forth on the pilgrimage vowed to a shrine. And, sure now, in the deeps of a soul first revealed to myself, that the Dead do ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... order were the dramatic entertainments, of which there were three kinds. First; comedy, which was a representation of common life, written in a familiar style, and usually with a happy issue: the design of it was, to expose vice and folly to ridicule. ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... regiment's headquarters in Oregon. Only five had got through; the rest had been killed and scalped. Finally, that we had something like 1,200 miles to go, and were already in the middle of August. It would be folly, obstinacy, madness, to attempt it. He would stop and hunt where we were, as long as I liked; or he would go back with me. He would hire fresh good men, and buy new horses; and, now that we knew the country, we could ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... before it starts at full speed, as though to test the quality of its sinews before the race. The Arabs course them with greyhounds, and sometimes they are caught by running several dogs at the same time; but this result is from the folly of the gazelle, who at first distances his pursuers like the wind; but, secure in its speed, it halts and faces the dogs, exhausting itself by bounding exultingly in the air; in the meantime the greyhounds are closing up, and diminishing ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... set himself to prove that a big man offered no better target than a more diminutive one, all of which was of course but the purest folly, as I very plainly showed him, whereat he fell a-whistling of the song "Lillibuleero" (as is his custom ever, when at all hipped or put out in any way). And so we presently came to the cross-roads. Now it has been our custom for the past twelve years ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... recognition of the Confederacy by any foreign governments, so long as it is without the confidence of the brokers. There is no question on which side the strength lies. The whole tone of the Southern journals, so far as we are able to judge, shows the inherent folly and weakness of the secession movement. Men who feel strong in the justice of their cause, or confident in their powers, do not waste breath in childish boasts of their own superiority and querulous depreciation of their antagonists. ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... for one who has given honest study to the question," said Mr. Wine Expert. "Wine is a mocker. Just as wisdom mocks at the calamity of those who reject it in Prov. 1:26. So, wine, personified in a similar manner, mocks at the folly of those who refuse it. (Applause.) Strong drink is raging. Just as in Jonah 1:15, the sea was raging in protest against Jonah because he refused to preach the truth to the people. So in this passage, 'strong drink is raging,' because so many church-members and ministers ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... in her folly, Ruth, holding her dolly; The heat of the noon Put her all out of tune: So wished, in her folly, ...
— The Nursery, September 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... be still a father! smooth thy brow: Thy son, despite his folly, shall not sink: He knows not what he says, yet shall not drink With sobs the salt foam of the swelling waters; But be, when passion passeth, good as thou, Nor perish like Heaven's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... "The folly of these new governors!" Menard strode back and forth. "Oh, it makes one sigh for old Frontenac. He never walked blindfolded into such a trap as this. But go on. You were ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... England," said John Heywood, solemnly, "many call themselves wise, and yet they are fools; and many assume the mask of folly, because fools are ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... wert serious! Is not it a thing to be lamented, that madness and folly should be in thy heart while thou livest, and after that to go to the dead; when so much life stands before thee, and light to see the way to it? Surely men void of grace and possessed of carnal minds must either think that sin is nothing, that hell is easy, and that eternity ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... had already enjoyed the peasant girl under the title of husband, and was waiting for an opportunity of making it known with safety to himself, being in dread of what his father the duke would do when he came to know of his folly. It happened, then, that as with young men love is for the most part nothing more than appetite, which, as its final object is enjoyment, comes to an end on obtaining it, and that which seemed to be love takes to flight, as it cannot pass the limit fixed ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... officiating Priest. I felt a shock given to all my nerves at once, and asked Cavalier D'Elci the meaning of so strange a device. His reply to me was, "E divozione mal intesa, Signora[Footnote: 'Tis ill-understood devotion, madam.];" and turning round to the other gentlemen, "Now this folly," said he, "a hundred years ago would have been the object of profound veneration and prodigious applause. Fifty years hence it would be censured as hypocritical; it is now passed by wholly unnoticed, except by this foreign Lady, who, I believe, thought ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... mother's side she clings, And mocks the death her folly brings To gentle swains that feel the smarts Her eyes inflict ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... who, after my repulse, had dropped back into his own corner of the car, was very angry. He talked again of our "God-forsaken island," and the folly of living in it, said our passage would be a long one in any case, and we might lose our ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... at length cried the last representative of the O'Donoghues of Bunratty, in scandalised tones. "My dear Rupert, you should have a curtain put up, that this exhibition of folly—of madness, I hardly know what to call it—be not exposed to every casual visitor. Dear me, dear me, that I should live to see any of my kin deliberately throw discredit on his family, if indeed the poor fellow is responsible! Rupert, my good soul, can you ascribe any reason for ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... to the people in a clear but less steady voice, for I could see that the woman had disturbed him, "Go pray to be forgiven for your insolence and folly. His most Christian Majesty is triumphant upon the Ohio. The English have been killed in thousands, and their General with them. Do you not hear the joy-bells in the Church of Our Lady of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... has not heard recitals of experiences wherein the narrator regretted some past kindness he had done, some trouble he had taken, to have nothing but vexation in return? These confidences generally end thus: "It was folly to do the thing!" Sometimes it is right so to judge; for it is always a mistake to cast pearls before swine; but how many lives there are whose sole acts of real beauty are these very ones of which the doers repent because of men's ingratitude! Our wish for humanity is that the number of ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... misguided, and their doctrine is folly. They believe the Messiah has come, although the world is like a hell, and men resemble devils! And ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... with many advantages over France and America. The science of government is better understood now than when they started; the folly of placing too many checks on the people is recognized; and the British system of responsible leadership by a cabinet in the legislature is fully developed. All these features are embodied in the Constitution, and it only remains for the people to prove ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... did not need. She seemed to stand before me still as I had left her, with my kiss fresh on her cheeks, and on her lips that strange, nervous, helpless laugh, the laugh that admitted a folly she could not conquer, expressed a shame that burned her even while she braved it, and owned a love so compact of this folly and this shame that its joy seemed all one with their bitterness. But to ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... was in his heart craved an outlet. He moved toward the hidden men, then paused. They were three to one; in the dark a fight would be folly. Nothing would please Garman better than for him to plunge blindly into a hopeless battle. As Roger thought over the situation his anger rose and clarified. He realized now what a poor figure he had cut face to face with Garman, ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... over his defenceless head!—too busy for the gad-fly life of the clubs—a strong, lonely swimmer in the tide of New York life, he was as yet a comparative stranger to Folly and her motley crew of merry wantons ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... me there, Janet. I hold you in great awe, and every lady in Wiltshire more or less;—and I think I may say every woman. And I would hold him in a sort of awe, too, if he didn't drive me beyond myself by his mixture of folly and pride." ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... gave every man his position. They were all veterans in every exigence of Indian warfare. Each man was capable of independent action. They all knew the folly of throwing away a single shot. There was no random firing. Each man was trained to seek sure protection behind rock, stump or tree, and then to keep a vigilant watch, not only to guard himself but his immediate comrades ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... Forbid the sea for to obey the Moon As or by oath remove or counsel shake The fabric of his folly, whose foundation Is pil'd ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... says, Mary, 'for as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool;' and thee can think of this the next time thee hears the chatter, and then thee can say to thyself, 'It may be nothing but foolish folly, after all.'" ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... meaning of this, or of any sentence of it, except indeed that horrid blasphemy which attributes crime to the Great Author of all virtue! The rest is mere empty absurdity. If it were worth our while to dilate on the folly of the production, we might find examples of every species of the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... that state of shy reserve towards me which I have named before. I thought she was ungrateful; for I was not quite sure if I had done wisely in having told her what I did. I had committed a fault, or a folly, perhaps, and all for her sake; and here was she, less friends with me than she had even been before. This little estrangement only lasted a few hours. I think that as Soon as she felt pretty sure of there being no ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... light as possible, and thought for a moment of trying to persuade Miss Joliffe that there was no need for her to see Lord Blandamer at all, unless he summoned her. But she was of a philosophic temperament, and in a moment had rebuked her own folly. What could any impression of Lord Blandamer's matter to her? she would probably never see him again unless she opened the door when he went out. Why should he think anything at all about a commonplace lodging-house, and its inmates? And if such trivial ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... below, and he knew the folly of expecting to see any one looking up to where he stood, feeling in his heart that it was far more likely that they might be lying in wait for his return far away towards the entrance of the gully, ready to cover his retreat if ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... hunger and of cold that you know assailed us, going Poleward; but have you ever considered that we were thirsty for water to drink or hungry for fat? To eat snow to quench our thirsts would have been the height of folly, and as well as being thirsty, we were continuously assailed by the pangs of a hunger that called for the fat, good, rich, oily, juicy fat that our systems craved ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... that she was always forgetting that Sally and she no longer spoke, but was always trying to encourage Sally into a return to their former relation. Sometimes Sally would glower across at May, bitterly hating her and riddling her plumpness and folly with the keen eye of malice. May, unconscious of the scrutiny, would go on with her work, self-satisfied, much coarser and more physical in her appetites than Sally, still in spite of all the rebuffs she had received grinning about her boys ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... due consideration, he cannot make too much haste to perform it. "Be not rash with thy mouth," saith the preacher. That is, do not vow rashly, but, "When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it: for He hath no pleasure in fools (slow performance is folly); pay that which thou hast vowed." Speedy paying (like speedy giving) is double payment; whereas slow payment is no payment or as bad as none, for it is foolish payment. A bond, if I mistake not, is presently due in law, if ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... indulged the practice through life. With a mile to walk when tired, I have caught myself, even quite late in life, comforting myself with the absurd assurance that another 'couple of miles' would bring me to my destination! To the naturally sanguine temperament this particular folly would be impossible, though its antithesis is pretty frequently ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... exception; for her sinlessness is explained in the papal decision of 1854 by the assumption of a miraculous interposition of divine favor, and the reflex influence of the merits of her Son. There is not a single mortal who must not charge himself with some defect or folly, and man's consciousness of sin and unworthiness deepens just in proportion to his self-knowledge and progress in virtue and goodness. There is not a single saint who has not experienced a new birth from above, and an actual conversion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the rebuke of the kindly satirist, who was so ready to show up his own weaknesses? In this respect our own great satirist Thackeray is very like him. Nor is this strange. They had many points in common—the same keen eye for human folly, the same tolerance for the human weaknesses of which they were so conscious in themselves, the same genuine kindness of heart. Thackeray's terse and vivid style, too, is probably in some measure due to this, that to him, as to Malherbe, Horace ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... 't is folly to be wise." How many people are there among us Christians who believe things which require quite as great an amount of faith? For instance, I remember witnessing, when I was a girl, a festival at Calvaria, in Gallicia, which is ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... attacked upon his return to Upper Canada, in law suits, and illegal processes, so that his estates became heavily encumbered, so that he went to France to pine away and die. The world failed to see any glamour in him, and carelessly said, what does it profit? Folly has its reward. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... few minutes more the hull of the stranger began to show. Eph, with a pair of marine glasses to his eyes, studied the stranger long and carefully. Lieutenant Benson, knowing it would be folly to hasten his comrade's judgment, waited ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... species of poetry or prose writing in which the vice or folly of the times is held up to ridicule, a species in which Horace and Juvenal excelled among the Romans, and Dryden, Pope, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "It is not I who have slain this Wanderer, if he indeed is dead, but his own folly. For he is gone up to look upon the Strange Hathor, and those who look upon the Hathor do battle with the Unseen Swords, and those who do battle with the Unseen Swords must lie in the baths of bronze and seek the ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... so far out in my reckoning? Is not that my Rosinante yonder? Here, Tom Leicester, you put my side-saddle on that gray horse, and the man's saddle on the piebald there. And now, Griffith Gaunt, it is your turn: you must withdraw your injurious terms, and end this superlative folly." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... long before the epoch when they would have obtained it by their own force and maturity? Or at least may they not place themselves under the government of more just and considerate rulers? How would this country repent her folly, if she should thus become the instrument of her own abasement; if she should herself be the cause of establishing a power already the most formidable rival of her commercial and maritime ascendency, in the very heart of her most valuable possessions, at the main external source ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... well if he had not been inspired by it, as by a passion, and fondly cherished his vein. In his odes, the love always exceeds the hate, so that the severest satire still sings itself, and the poet is satisfied, though the folly ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... pause. What was the use of exploring the tunnel further? He could see nothing, hear nothing. So where was the use of groping along in the darkness? It was folly, especially when he might be precipitated at any moment into some hidden chasm. But folly though it might be, Paul could not turn back. A mysterious voice within him seemed to be urging him on. If Mr. Weevil had passed along that tunnel in safety, why shouldn't he? ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... acquire frivolous and meretricious accomplishments. Like all races in which the savage naturally predominates, they delight in the glitter of personal decoration, the allurements of music, dancing, and the gambling-table, and all the luxuries of idleness and sensuous folly—traits which they share pretty generally with the rest of mankind. Tropical gardens, where the thermometer is twenty degrees below zero; feasts and frolics that in a single night may leave them beggars for life; military shows; the smoke and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... own bed! Nothing but the haziest recollections came to me at first, nothing but dim memories of the awful being who had lured me there; for I perceived now that all the messages proceeded, not from Bristol, but from Hassan of Aleppo! I had been a fool, and I was reaping the fruits of my folly. Could I have known that almost within pistol shot of me the Inspector was trussed up as helpless as I, then indeed my situation must have become unbearable, since upon him I ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... were sufficient. Remembering black episodes of the past (one at least of them had occurred not a thousand yards from the very spot upon which we now stood), I knew that I had spoken folly. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... to sally forth on my adventurous expedition. Sober views might have speedily succeeded to the present tempest of my passions. I might have gradually discovered the romantic and criminal temerity of my project, the folly of revenge, and the duty of preserving my life for the benefit of mankind. I might have suspected the propriety of my conclusion, and have admitted some doubts as to the catastrophe which I imagined to have befallen ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... never intended to marry Philip, but she kept him waiting so long for her decision, and so exasperated him with her caprice, that he exclaimed at last, "That girl has ten thousand devils in her." He little thought, that beneath that surface of folly there was a nature hard as steel, and a calm, clear, cool intelligence, for which his own would be no match, and which would one day hold in check the diplomacy of the "Escurial" and outwit that of Europe. She adored the culture ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... certain to do in the long run,"—here the doctor put the pipe in his mouth, and finished his speech with it there,—"the figure of the continent has become known, and may be set down in maps. The exploring parties have started long ago. What folly in the one to pooh-pooh or be suspicious of the exertions of the other. That party deserves the greatest credit which meets the other more than half way."—"Bravo!" cried the clergyman, when the doctor had finished ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... one of these bright intervals of her life that Mrs. Carlen wrote "The Home in the Valley," for the work is a continued description of the delights of home, which, although occasionally obscured by grief, and in some instances, by folly, are rendered still more precious by ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... me at this time. I lived in a thrifty region, and for a man who could not support himself to think of taking upon him the support of a wife, especially such a wife as Agnes Havelot would be, was considered more than folly and looked upon as a crime. Everybody knew that I was in love with Miss Havelot, for I went to court her as boldly as I went to fish or shoot. There was a good deal of talk about it, and this finally came to the ears of Mr. Havelot, ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... measures of reform before either party had taken a frank attitude respecting it. "I have been more than usually despondent," wrote the originator of the Wilson Bill, who had lost his seat in 1894, "as I see how the folly of our Southern people, in taking up a false and destructive issue, and assaulting the very foundations of public and private credit, are throwing away the solid fruits of the great victory, solidifying the North as it never was solid in the burning days of reconstruction, and condemning ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... signs of the fineness of the skin; but her features were coarsened, as it were, and the circles about her eyes were unwontedly dark. Nature nevertheless was so vigorous in her, that these traces of past folly did not spoil her beauty. Her eyes glittered. She looked like some Herodias of da Vinci's (I have dealt in pictures), so magnificently full of life and energy was she; there was nothing starved nor stinted in feature or outline; she awakened desire; it seemed to me ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... is with the ministries of our Lord. He leads us through discords into harmonies, through opposition into union, through adversities into peace. His means of grace are processes, sometimes gentle, sometimes severe; and our folly is to assume that we have reached His ends when we are only on the way to them. "The end of the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy." "Be patient, therefore," until it shall be spoken of thee and me, "And God ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... is sheer folly to waste more time hunting for this bird. My father is old, and if he dies I shall inherit ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... in charity with all mankind, I am not so wedded to his friendship as to break the laws of God, and run the risk of suffering or committing murder, in order to regain it. And for you, sir, methinks your advanced years and past misfortunes might teach you the folly of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... heart-strings of the miner. He was communicative and liberal of his promises. His daughter, he said, had repented of her folly, and now looked with indifference upon the fate of ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... danger had ever aroused at Rome was not dead. [Sidenote: Rage of the equites. The law of Varius.] The offer was sternly rejected, and the equites turned furiously on the optimates, or the Italianising section of the optimates, to whose folly they felt that the war was due. With war the hope of their gains was gone; and, enraged at this, they took advantage of the outbreak to repay the Senate for its complicity in the attempt of Drusus to deprive them of the judicia. Under a law of ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... the whole talk of "profiteering" as an element in bringing on or supporting the war is due either to folly or else to deliberate pacifist and pro-German propaganda. There was an immense amount of profiteering in this country during the two and a half years of our ignoble neutrality between right and wrong. The pacifists and pro-Germans played the game ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... to the wooer. And likewise a sage and discreet man exhibiteth the wooer naked to the woman. At this custom we laughed and disallowed it as foolish. But they, on their part, do greatly wonder at the folly of all other nations which, in buying a colt where a little money is in hazard, be so chary and circumspect that though he be almost all bare, yet they will not buy him unless the saddle and all the harness be taken off, lest under these ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... there came other news, namely, that my father had been captured, that he had been handed over to the power of the Holy Office, as the accursed Inquisition was then named, and tortured to death at Seville. When my grandfather heard this he wept, and bemoaned himself that his folly in forcing one into the Church who had no liking for that path, had brought about the shameful end of his only son. After that date also he broke his friendship with the prior of St. Mary's at Bungay, and ceased his offerings to the priory. Still he ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... realized the folly of his act. He would have given all he possessed to have recalled the blow. McNabb had trusted him to carry out a carefully laid plan—and he had failed. He remembered how the old Scot had told ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... superior in comprehending his duty, yet he committed many acts of folly. He was distinguished for his bravery in some cases, yet he often failed through cowardice. He was characterized equally by greatness of soul and a servile disposition of mind. He would plunder the property of others, and still relinquish his own. He pitied many without cause and chastised ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... act of financial folly," interrupted my most systematic professional enemy, a certain Dr. Gazell. He had a bland voice which irritated me like sugar sauce put upon horse-radish. "It cannot be done without mortgaging ourselves up to our ears—or our eaves. I maintain that the hospital can better bear to turn off ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... conscience was, as I said, dumb, as to any disturbance it gave me in my wickedness. My vanity was fed up to such a height that I had no room to give way to such reflections. But I could not but sometimes look back with astonishment at the folly of men of quality, who, immense in their bounty as in their wealth, give to a profusion and without bounds to the most scandalous of our sex, for granting them the liberty of abusing ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... dead man first!" exclaimed Diccon. "This were folly, Master Roger. A lion's den were safer than ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... compost of the one who dies. To whose advantage? Nay, there is no God! But He, whose other name is Pitiful, was pleased By melting gentleness whose measures broke The ramps of ignorance and keeps of lust, Tumbling alike folly and the fool to dust, To teach me womanhood until there spoke Still voices inspiration had released, And I heard truly. All the voices said: Out of departed yesterday is grown to-day; Out of to-day to-morrow surely breaks; ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... triumphant departure of the allies of Hell, were utterly broken in spirit. Their discomfited hearts will be being prepared for some word or sin. Will they then begin to see their national, as well as their individual folly? Who can say for certain? But the near-to-come events with them, would almost seem to point to something like this. Certainly, God's unforseen plan was about to flash ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... the murderer's knife; the bullet of an insurgent struck down the friend by his side. And yet no feeling of hatred, no breath of anger could ever obscure, even for a moment, the spotless mirror of his soul. Untouched by human folly, unmoved by human malice, he proceeds with a firm and regular step on his way, like the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... believe this?' But I couldn't help feeling that if only this world would continue, if only the people could always be free and happy and the sun could shine, perhaps the rest of the world would see its folly and the war would stop and never begin again. This thought would grow in my mind as I walked, although I ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... delights in horses, he does not resemble me. You must ride at the Panathenaea on a horse fit for the great king: four acres of my best vines went for that folly. You must retrench, or you will have nothing to eat. Does not Anaxagoras mention, among his other discoveries, that when a man has nothing to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is indeed folly that has brought me into this trouble. I was happy enough at home before ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... rash act of folly," said she, in a hoarse croaking voice; "do not go without a dog: they must ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... say, little brother mine, and I heard my name called. I started up. A voice was whispering at my very ear. 'Look out to-morrow!' it said, 'I am coming.' And so it befell twice. Now look! wouldst thou believe it? the idea stuck to me—I scold myself for my folly, and yet I look for Him, our ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... head that I might not see his shining scalp. Thank heaven, I thought, Hughy doesn't know enough to be deterred by two rejections, nor even by the gossip about Strathay. I wished—it was wicked, of course—I wished I were his widow; but I was determined not to repeat such folly as I had shown about ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... building of an Episcopal cathedral simply as a piece of religious folly. The world will never be converted by Christian palaces and temples. Every dollar used in its construction will be wasted. It will have no tendency to unite the various sects; on the contrary, it will excite the envy and jealousy of every other sect. It will widen the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... but a continued comment upon the folly of the law of the hereditary descent of power, a law which is more likely to place the crown upon the brow of a knave, a fool or a madman, than upon that of one qualified to govern. Russia soon awoke to the consciousness that the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... suppose I'd forgotten all the rest of my past life, and his vile act as well, and yet remembered alone what little love, if any, I ever had borne him? It was incredible that any man, however wicked, however conceited, should think such folly as that—that a girl would marry her father's murderer; and yet what might not one expect from a man who, after having shot my father, had still the inconceivable and unbelievable audacity to take deliberate steps for securing my own comfort and happiness? ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... alive she felt she had a friend who was as large of heart as he was just, and who would not scorn the fool according to his folly, or chastise the erring after his deserts. In his greatness of soul Pere Langon had shut his eyes to things that pained him more than they shocked him, for he had seen life in its most various and demoralized forms, and indeed had had his own ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cold was grown the devotion of the people. "I have taken my measures," said he, "and if in two years Mahomet comes not in person to visit the congregations of the faithful, who acknowledge him for God's true prophet, I will certainly look out for some other religion." Xavier took pity on the folly of the Caciz, and endeavoured all he could to convert him at that instant from Mahometanism; but he could not prevail upon an obstinate mind, blinded with the opinion of its own reason; and therefore the father acquiesced in the decrees of that Providence, which has fixed the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... possess a moral distrust of my best friends, and a sort of inclination to lead others to doubt them too; therefore, in departing from this rule, I should (as the actors say) be playing a part quite out of my line, and should, therefore, run the risk of being hissed, which would be an act of folly." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ruthless destruction of all who bore one name. Still nobody suspected the true culprits, search was fruitless, inquiries led nowhere: the marquise put on mourning for her brothers, Sainte-Croix continued in his path of folly, and all things went on as before. Meanwhile Sainte-Croix had made the acquaintance of the Sieur de Saint Laurent, the same man from whom Penautier had asked for a post without success, and had made friends with him. Penautier ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... man has often shown that he could not stand luxury and, like a child, broke out into folly when abundance came after a long period of want. But wealth is the only nurturing ground for the bloom of beauty, whereto in our striving for a higher life, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... Bo, he would do just as Yulee said, but he privately resolved never to follow her to sea at any rate. Even Miss Phely appeared so much the worse for her knocking about that I think she must have been better satisfied with her corner in the nursery; but as for repenting of her folly or blaming Yulee, I never heard of her doing so. She always looked ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... arm-chair. Why go home in the rain to dress? It was folly to take a cab to the opera, it was worse folly to go there at all. His perpetual meetings with Alexa Trent were as unfair to the girl as they were unnerving to himself. Since he couldn't marry her, it was time to stand aside and give a better man the chance—and his thought admitted the ironical ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... but not to my knowledge more wicked. But it is to the vain and foolish that the punishments fall;—and to them they fall so thickly and constantly that the thinker is driven to think that vanity and folly are of all sins those which may be the least forgiven. As for Cradell I may declare that he did marry Amelia, that he did, with some pride, take the place of master of the house at the bottom of Mrs Roper's table, and that he did make himself ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... runaway horse on foot as he is almost sure to do if caught in such a predicament. He ought to know that he cannot outrun his fleet steed in such a race, but seems to be impelled by some strange impulse to make the attempt. After he has run himself out of breath he is liable to realize the folly of his zeal and adopt a more sensible ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk |
