Wordgrove Post & Review

THIS EDITION: fool :: ignorance :: excuse

Quoted In The Grove:
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
~Alfred North Whitehead

Life teaches us that we are never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
~Anatole France

Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now. This thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.
~Jim Rohn

EndQuote:
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it.
~Ursula K Le Guin

~~

Exercise Prompt for 06/21: discover

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The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge.
~Aldous Huxley

Greatest fools are the most often satisfied.
~Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool ‒ and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool.
~Carl Sandburg

~

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we still had a few fools left.
~Jack Worthing

Ah! I prefer a gentlemanly fool any day. There is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose.
~Oscar Wilde

I have met with some of them – very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools.
~Giacomo Casanova

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To find a young fellow that is neither a wit in his own eye, nor a fool in the eye of the world, is a very hard task.
~William Congreve

Too many men are afraid of being fools.
~Henry Ford

For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.
~James Gibbons Huneker

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.
~Charlie Chaplin

Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.
~Cher

I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.
~Billy Joel

If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I’m not frightened by anyone’s perception of me.
~Angelina Jolie

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!
~Marquis de Sade

Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.
~Oscar Hammerstein

Of all Excuses this is most forbid:
I did the Thing because the Others did.
~Arthur Guiterman

~

The biggest fool in the world is he who merely does his work supremely well, without attending to appearance.
~Michael Korda

I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.
~Billy Joel

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A fool is like other men as long as he is silent.
~Jacob Cats

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
~Ovid

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
~Euripides

A wise man may look ridiculous in the company of fools.
~Thomas Fuller

A fool’s paradise is a wise man’s hell!
~Thomas Fuller

If ignorance were bliss the world would be a fool’s paradise.
~Poor Richard Junior’s Philosophy

Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool’s paradise when that’s the only paradise he’ll ever have a chance to enter.
~Jessamyn West

—

Wise men learn by other men’s mistakes, fools by their own.
~H G Bohn

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.
~Charles Caleb Colton

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
~Bruce Lee

Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.
~Marcus Porcius Cato

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.
~Benjamin Franklin

The wise does at once what the fool does at last.
~Baltasar Gracian

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.
~Marcus Tullius Cicero

~ ~

Posted From The Grove

The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own.
~W S Gilbert

You can’t talk sense to people who oppose it on principle.
~Robert Brault

~

I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.
~James A Garfield

I would be a fool to put my feet down in a position where I can’t accommodate metamorphoses.
~Jack Kemp

~

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
~Abraham Lincoln

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.
~George W Bush

It may be true that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
~Will Durant

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
~James Thurber

~

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
~George Bernard Shaw

It’s a terrible thing when a fool with power fools with power.
~Kelly Barnhil

DESTINY, n. A tyrant’s authority for crime and a fool’s excuse for failure.
~Ambrose Bierce

~

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master’s ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.
~Walter Lippmann

It is a fool’s prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.
~Neil Gaiman

An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.
~Kevin Hart

~

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
~Isaac Asimov

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men – and the fools know it.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ridicule is the first and last argument of a fool.
~Charles Simmons

~

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
~Baltasar Gracian

A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.
~Louis L’Amour

~

This age thinks better of a gilded fool
Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school.
~Thomas Dekker

Who is more a fool: the fool, or he who follows the fool?
~Lexor

I don’t want to give too much ink to foolish men.
~Tori Amos

~

We think that democracy can change a lot of things, but we’re being fooled, because democracy is not the election. We’ve been taught that democracy is having elections. And it isn’t. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It’s the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect.
~Gael Garcia Bernal

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
~Ambrose Bierce

For Forms of Government let fools contest;
whatever is best administered is best.
~Alexander Pope

~

Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.
~George Will

Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise.
~Alexander Meiklejohn

~

To pursue a so-called Third Way is foolish. We had our experience with this in the 1960s when we looked for a socialism with a human face. It did not work, and we must be explicit that we are not aiming for a more efficient version of a system that has failed.
~Vaclav Klaus

~

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they’ve got to go about it themselves – they can’t depend on a particular person, i.e. me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what’s going on all over the world.
~Aung San Suu Kyi

~

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.
~Bono

~

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
~Thomas B Macaulay

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.
~George Santayana

~

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.
~John Updike

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.
~Thomas Carlyle

Any lazy or biased fool can have opinions; making judgments is the hard work of responsible and compassionate people.
~Lewis B Smedes

~

Is there in all the history of human folly a greater fool than a clergymen in politics?
~Pat Robertson

We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
~Martin Luther King, Jr

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
~Charles Caleb Colton

~

Those who the wise consider fools are often better tuned to speak before a crowd.
~Euripides

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.
~Igor Stravinsky

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Anyone who says they’re not afraid at the time of a hurricane is either a fool or a liar, or a little bit of both.
~Anderson Cooper

A fool too late bewares when all the peril is past.
~Elizabeth I

The learned is happy, nature to explore;
The fool is happy, that he knows no more.
~Alexander Pope

Whenever people attack not the idea — but its source — you know they’ve hit the brick wall of their intellectual limitations.
~Dr Idel Dreimer

-or, poetically-

Ad hominem attacks
Betray an absence of facts.
~Dr Idel Dreimer

~

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed – chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones.
~John Muir

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
~John Muir

You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.
~Donella Meadows

Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.
~Honore de Balzac

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
~Richard P Feynman

Nature never makes any blunders, when she makes a fool she means it.
~Archibald Alexander

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~Philip Larkin: The Old Fools (3:46) a perspective, a poem

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~Quina Aragon: Foolish Vine (1:50) wall embracing, a poem

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~ElliottOnline • Leopold von Seckendorff: The Fool (2:56) all for safety and security, a poem

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~Dick Cavett Show: Dudley Moore, Peter Cooke, et al (8:47) light banter, easy going, good fun interview

~~

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
~Douglas Adams

I wonder sometimes if manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.
~Alan Coren

~

Men don’t and can’t live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don’t live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.
~John Ruskin

There are two kinds of fools. One says, ‘This is old, therefore it is good.’ The other says, ‘This is new, therefore it is better.’
~William Ralph Inge

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
~E F Schumacher

~

Men would not live long in society, were they not the mutual dupes of each other.
~François VI de la Rochefoucault

Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not succeed.
~Mark Twain

Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn’t be any fun living in it, or profit.
~Josh Billings

~

I think any man in business would be foolish to fool around with his secretary. If it’s somebody else’s secretary, fine.
~Barry Goldwater

A fool and his money are soon parted.
~Thomas Tusser

A fool and her money are soon courted.
~Helen Rowland

A fool and his money are soon elected.
~Will Rogers

A fool and his money get a lot of publicity.
~Al Bernstein

A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place.
~Stanley Weiser

~

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
~Adlai E.Stevenson

Money and fame made me believe I was entitled. I was wrong and foolish.
~Tiger Woods

Always remember, money isn’t everything – but also remember to make a lot of it before talking such fool nonsense.
~Earl Wilson

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Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favor.
~Henry Fielding

The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you.
~Kin Hubbard

To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man.
~Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.
~William Shakespeare

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Be willing to use yourself to get out there and put the company on the market. If you have to make a fool of yourself, make a fool of yourself, but make sure that you end up on the front pages, not the back pages. In time, it’s possible that your company will stand out from the crowd, and you’ll be successful.
~Richard Branson

You’d be a fool or a deluded idealist to think ethics would be prominent on Wall Street. That is not a statement against people in the money business, just a fact.
~Steven Levitt

A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.
~Henry Fielding

And, I believe that if a man dies with a single penny still sitting in the bank, he’s a fool.
~Dan Aykroyd

—

More books, more racing and more foolishness with cars and motorcycles are in the works.
~Brock Yates

Anybody who can drive and doesn’t come out of it a rich man is a fool. ~Mario Andretti

The fool inherits, but the wise must get.
~William Cartwright

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I mean any fool can hurl themselves at a climb that is beyond their abilities to safely negotiate. You may get away with such an approach nine times, but the tenth time you don’t come back.
~Jeff Lowe

The loser, the fool, is embraced in England because there is a recognition of silliness there that allows a person to keep his ambitions and desires at a certain distance. Just being in the race is enough.
~Roger Rees

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You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!
~Mr T

You fool around with different pitches playing catch, but it’s not the same when you’ve got to face some guy with a bat in his hand.
~Chili Davis

Yes, I know that you feel you are not strong enough. That’s what the enemy thinks too. But we’re gonna fool them.
~Knute Rockne

It’s hard to argue with a coach who says, ‘I just want you to work.’ What can you say to that without making a fool of yourself?
~J B Bickerstaff

~~

§ VIDEO:

With fools forbear to argue ‒ better strive to wake the dead.
~Bhartrhari

Arguing with a fool proves there are two.
~Doris M Smith

There is little anyone can do with fanatics. Reasoning with them is a fool’s errand. Avoiding them is mandatory.
~Bill O’Reilly

I do not attack fools, but foolishness.
~Jacques du Laurens

I don’t argue with fools; I educate.
~Shannon L. Alder

~

If there is one tree that man needs to eat of, it is the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and if any knowledge will keep him alive and make him happy and perfect, it is just this knowledge which God forbid him to acquire. We are dying today from ignorance, not from knowledge…
~Lemuel K Washburn

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.
~Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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It is harder to conceal ignorance than to acquire knowledge.
~Arnold H Glasow

Everybody is ignorant. Only on different subjects.
~Will Rogers

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Whatever tends to prolong the existence of ignorance or to prevent the recognition of knowledge is dangerous to the well-being of the human race…
~Lemuel K Washburn

History shows that there is nothing so easy to enslave and nothing so hard to emancipate as ignorance, hence it becomes the double enemy of civilization. By its servility it is the prey of tyranny, and by its credulity it is the foe of enlightenment.
~Lemuel K Washburn

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A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
~George Bernard Shaw

Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
~William Hazlitt

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
~William Osler

An erudite fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool.
~Moliere

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The fool has set in his heart that he can get more money through the tiring of his muscle and the starvation of his brain ‒ but he can’t.
~William D Hoard

I know a lot of people think I’m dumb. Well, at least I ain’t no educated fool.
~Leon Spinks

~

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.
~Karl Kraus

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.
~Saul Bellow

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
~Charles Caleb Colton

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
~Ambrose Bierce

I’ve never been a disciple of any school. I’ve lived too long. I’ve seen all the schools, I’ve seen people say, I’m sorry… You can only do that about three times in your life; after that, you begin to feel like a fool!
~Stuart Hall

—

But don’t you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do: and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot. Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make any valuable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right one?
~Mark Twain

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
~William Blake

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
~Robert A Heinlein

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A fool must now and then be right, by chance.
~William Cowper

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
~Winston S Churchill

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.
~Josh Billings

A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.
~Miguel de Unamuno

Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness.
~Sacha Guitry

He is no fool
If he would choose
To give the thing he cannot keep
To buy what he can never lose
~Twila Paris

—

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.
~Marcus Aurelius (the reverse, perhaps, equally true. ed. note)

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
~Richard P Feynman

~

What are men the readiest to dub stupid? The cleverness which they cannot understand.
~Marie Dubsky, Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach

Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.
~Thomas H Huxley

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.
~William Blake

~

Fools, through false shame, conceal their open wounds.
~Horace

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.
~Benjamin Disraeli

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~Tomasz Aleksander: Fool’s Errand (14:04) recapturing love

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~Omeleto: La Loteria (8:28) three regrets of a fool, then… (subtitled)

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When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.
~William Shakespeare

I wasn’t born a fool. It took work to get this way.
~Danny Kaye (comedian)

I don’t think people are fools, and I think they deserve a good attitude and smart entertainment.
~Tatyana Tolstaya

~

There is only a finger’s difference between a wise man and a fool.
~Diogenes

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.
~Cynthia Heimel

As soon as you become afraid to make a fool of yourself, you’re in trouble. I decided I may as well just see if I can live with myself making millions of mistakes and learn something from it.
~Gelsey Kirkland (ballet)

I am a performer. I go on stage and make a fool of myself.
~Mikhail Baryshnikov

We’re fools whether or not we dance, so we may as well dance.
~author unknown

People who think they’re making a fool of themselves on the dance floor usually do.
~Cyd Charisse

~

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.
~Miguel de Cervantes

Only a genius can play a fool.
Michael Rapaport

—

Anyone who works is a fool. I don’t work ‒ I merely inflict myself upon the public.
~Robert Morley

There’s a thin line between catering to the masses and making a fool of yourself; I try to walk that line.
~Samantha Akkineni

~

It’s fun to explore behavior that you can’t explore in your own life, so you fool around with it in acting.
~James Spader

I think I always resented the fact that people thought I was trying to entertain them with my multifaceted, chameleon-like character changes. Although I liked doing that, I wasn’t out to fool people and say ‘Guess which one is me.’
~Cindy Sherman

—

Look, at the same time that I don’t want to be a celebrity, I understand that when you make movies you put yourself out in the public eye. I’d be a baby and a fool to be like, ‘Why are there cameras taking pictures of me?’ when I’m on a billboard for a movie. I think that’s a very absurd concept.
~Jonah Hill

I’m not going to be caught around here for any fool celebration. To hell with birthdays!
~Norman Rockwell

I won’t fool anybody by saying, ‘Oh! I’m a private person.’ I love people, flashbulbs and the paparazzi.
~Sameera Reddy

~

You can’t control how you are perceived, and you are a fool if you waste any energy trying to do so. Vanity will get you nowhere.
~Dave Blood

That equals to being a fool, having fame and no fortune. A lot of guys out there have fame doing this and doing that, but they are broke.
~Mike Tyson

~

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.
~Bruce Lee

Diets are a fool’s errand.
~Evangeline Lilly

You need talent, dedication, skills, perseverance and so many other things to become successful. If you think you are very talented but someone needs to unveil your talent, then you are living in a fool’s paradise. You have to prove yourself every day.
~Rituparna Sengupta

That fame monster’s a fool, man. It really is.
~Gucci Mane

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.
~Dylan Thomas

God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.
~William Shakespeare

—

A lot of times, somebody will say something and it will give you a good title. So you carry a pencil with you and jot that down. You don’t just write a song right quick, though. You fool around and work with it. You have to keep going over and over it and see if you can’t write a song that means something.
~Gene Autry

I’m blessed with a good pair of ears. That’s how I fooled my piano teacher. I’d watch his fingers and I’d listen to it, and I just kind of basically learned it by myself.
~Eddie Van Halen

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.
~Bob Marley

~~

§ MUSIC:

Everybody is somebody’s fool.
~Michael O’Hara

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
~George Bernard Shaw

Saw a wedding in the church. It was strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.
~Samuel Pepys

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
~H L Mencken

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.
~George Eliot

Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.
~Sydney J Harris

~

He’s a fool that marries, but he’s a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold?
~William Wycherley

Personally, I don’t like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she’ll fool her husband, I figure she’ll fool me.
~Orson Welles

The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.
~William Hazlitt

You give me nothing during your life, but you promise to provide for me at your death. If you are not a fool, you know what I wish for!
~Marcus Valerius Martial

~

Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you.
~Joey Adams

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
~Jonathan Swift

~

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
~Samuel Johnson

I don’t care what consequence it brings, I have been a fool for lesser things.
~Billy Joel

Almost everybody’s happy to be a fool for love.
~Jack Nicholson

~

Some women can be fooled all of the time, and all women can be fooled some of the time, but the same woman can’t be fooled by the same man in the same way more than half of the time.
~Helen Rowland

The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband’s bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.
~Pearl S Buck

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
~H L Mencken

~

A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.
~William Makepeace Thackeray

The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time… love lavished on absolute fools. Love’s a charity ward, you know.
~Lawrence Durrell

Fortune makes a fool of those she favors too much.
~Horace

The heart is forever making the head its fool.
~Francois de La Rochefoucauld

~

It’s easy to fool the eye but it’s hard to fool the heart.
~Al Pacino

A beautiful woman delights the eye; a wise woman, the understanding; a pure one, the soul.
~Minna Antrim

It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.
~Helen Rowland

~

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.
~Marilyn Monroe

Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he’s in love with her.
~Agatha Christie

~

Speaking is the one trait in which woman is superior to man. Consider what happens when a couple argues. The man tries to talk to the woman. The stupid fool ‒ he can never win.
~Harry Harlow

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
~Rudyard Kipling

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.
~Honore de Balzac

The man who has never made a fool of himself in love will never be wise in love.
~Theodor Reik

The heart is forever making the head its fool.
~Francois de La Rochefoucauld

~

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.
~Marilyn Monroe

Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he’s in love with her.
~Agatha Christie

—

Three things have been difficult to tame: the oceans, fools and women. We may soon be able to tame the oceans; fools and women will take a little longer.
~Spiro T Agnew

I’m interested in women’s health because I’m a woman. I’d be a darn fool not to be on my own side.
~Maya Angelou

You give me nothing during your life, but you promise to provide for me at your death. If you are not a fool, you know what I wish for!
~Marcus Valerius Martial

Women’s liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It’s men who are discriminated against. They can’t bear children. And no one is likely to do anything about that.
~Golda Meir

I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men.
~George Eliot

~~

~Freddy Cole: I Am A Fool To Want You (6:15) complete w/ unfolding love story

~

~Fool’s Gold: Surprise Hotel (4:32) goofy old guys, tropical sound, bouncy fun

~

~Cavetown: Fool (3:53) dream-like melancholy

~

~Villagers: Fool (3:24) heaven, what he’s here-after

~

~Laikeu Fool: Showreel 2015 (2:26) banquet of images to music

~

~Playing For Change: Teach Your Children (6:14) preempting fools

~~

The ‘good’ mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the ‘bad’ mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good.
~Rachel Cusk

Every success story has a parent who says, ‘over my dead body.’ Every success story has an old person who walks up to you and says, when you’re acting the fool, ‘you know I worry about you sometimes.’
~Bill Cosby

Mom spent the time that she was supposed to be a kid actually raising children, her younger brother and younger sister. She was tough as nails and did not suffer fools at all. And the truth was she could not afford to. She spoke the truth, bluntly, directly, and without much varnish. I am her son.
~Chris Christie

~

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.
~Jean de La Fontaine

Real friends are those who, when you’ve made a fool of yourself, don’t feel that you’ve done a permanent job.
~Erwin T Randall (paraphrasing Laurence J Peter)

A true friend sees past your excuses to the real reason it’s not your fault.
~Robert Brault

~

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
~Samuel Butler

I really love pets. They’re like children. They know if you really love them or not. You can’t fool them.
~Donna Douglas

~~

~~

I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
~Jack Handey

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one’s clothes.
~Mark Twain

My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
~Jonathan Swift

Dopeler effect: the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
~Greg Oetjen

A naked woman in heels is a beautiful thing. A naked man in shoes looks like a fool.
~Christian Louboutin

Part of it went on gambling, and part of it went on women. The rest I spent foolishly.
~George Raft

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.
~W C Fields

Light travels faster than sound. That’s why most people seem bright until you hear them speak.
~Author unknown

The APRIL FOOL was born this month,
A simple man but clever;
And tho’ 6,000 years have passed,
He’s as big a fool as ever.
~Josh Billings

…for the gods too love a joke…
~Plato

~

Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals — except the weasel.
~The Simpsons

A joke is at most a temporary rebellion against virtue, and its aim is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.
~George Orwell

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
~Elbert Hubbard

~

I’m dealing with fools and trolls and soft targets. It’s just strafing runs in my underwear before my first cup of coffee. I don’t have time for these clowns.
~Charlie Sheen

The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.
~Oliver Goldsmith

I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.
~Edgar Allan Poe

New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
~James Agate

~

I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have so much more of it.
~Mark Twain

Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton.
~Dean Koontz

Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.
~Lynda Barry

—

Wine has made me bold, but not foolish;
has induced me to say silly things,
but not do them.
~Duff Cooper

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
~Ernest Hemingway

A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn’t afterward.
~Frank Lloyd Wright

~

When you start fooling around with drugs, you’re hurting your creativity, you’re hurting your health. Drugs are death, in one form or another. If they don’t kill you, they kill your soul. And if your soul’s dead, you’ve got nothing to offer, anyway.
~Paul Stanley

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
~James Russell Lowell

Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
~Edward Young

~

The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.
~Benjamin Disraeli

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
~George S Patton

~~

The Simpletons

© SCFaber

~~

A fool is his own informer.
~Yiddish Proverb

Justifying a fault doubles it.
~French proverb

Bad excuses are worse than none.
~Proverb

The fool is always beginning to live.
~Proverb

Learned fools are the greatest fools.
~German Proverb

He who is born a fool is never cured.
~Proverb

He who excuses himself accuses himself.
~Proverb

Fools and scissors require good handling.
~Japanese prover

Fools build houses, and wise men buy them.
~English Proverb

Don’t do what you’ll have to find an excuse for.
~Proverb

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.
~Proverbs 12:15

No one is a fool always, everyone sometimes.
~Roman Proverb

Only a fool leans upon his own misunderstanding.
~Jamaican Proverb

If a fool could keep silent he would not be a fool.
~Swedish Proverb

One fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.
~French Proverb

Fools are like other folks as long as they are silent.
Danish proverb

If every fool wore a crown, we should all be kings.
~Welsh proverb

Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
~African Proverb

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.
~Proverbs 26:11

If you don’t want to do something, one excuse is as good as another.
~Yiddish proverb

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
~Proverb

Young people tell what they are doing, old people what they have done and fools what they wish to do.
~French Proverb

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
~Chinese Proverb

~ ~

@Writers Platform:

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
~Erica Jong

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.
~Roald Dahl

~

And I love the twist. I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, and on the very last page, quite often – very last paragraph sometimes – I like to just play with your perception one more time in a way that makes everything that came before just a little bit different.
~Harlan Coben

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
~Ambrose Bierce

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned; but still ’tis nonsense.
~Benjamin Franklin

Come along, Fool
A direct hit of the senses, you are disconnected
It’s not that it’s bad, it’s not that it’s death
It’s just on the tip of your tongue, and you’re so silent
~Chan Marshall

You go from these high hopes when you’re writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it.
~Rian Johnson

If you’re going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself.
~Annie Dillard

Don’t let expertise fool you into seeing false boundaries or underestimating those with wild dreams.
~Naveen Jain

~

Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dealer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.
~Alfred Lord Tennyson

[A] man who scarcely ever allows a thought to work his brain, has no right to stand up with an air of importance and authority and try to strangle my little work.
~James Gillingham

Don’t let expertise fool you into seeing false boundaries or underestimating those with wild dreams.
~Naveen Jain

~

The hardest thing about being an unpublished writer is that there’s always that voice in your head that asks if you’re really being a fool. You might just really stink and not know it. You have to have a lot of blind faith in the process. You have to like it so much that you’re going to do it anyway.
~Watt Key

I’d be a fool to be in this for the money.
~Benny Hinn

The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.
~Pauline Kael

~

I’m ashamed to say, I’ve done hideous pen portraits of people I don’t like in my novels. And they’ll say, ‘Oh, that person was hideous,’ and I’m nodding, and I’m thinking, ‘It’s you, you fool!’
~Sandi Toksvig

There is an increasing market for mental hospital stuff. I am a fool if I don’t relive it, recreate it.
~Sylvia Plath

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.
~Maya Angelou

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn’ fool if they weren’t.
~Dylan Thomas

People have the power to redeem the work of fools.
~Patti Smith

~

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It’s not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written.
~Saul Williams

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
~Montesquieu

~~

§ The Glass Table:*

 Never Truly

Rainbowed shadows of life
flickering pale images
winding walls within my mind
the only life they breathe
soft sighs and murmuring cries
the language of loneliness and loss
dreams that never die, yet
never, truly live

~Greenie

*Glass Table on Writers Platform, There.com

~~

We all know how we can be turned around by a magic place; that’s why we travel, often. And yet we all know, too, that the change cannot be guaranteed. Travel is a fool’s paradise, Emerson reminded us, if we think that we can find anything far off that we could not find at home.
~Pico Iyer

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
~William Hazlitt

The fool wanders, a wise man travels.
~Thomas Fuller

Travel is for reaching known destinations. Touring is for cameras and memories. The fool wanders and trusts the unknown for his education.
~author unknown

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad and to travel for it too!
~William Shakespeare

~

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
~Hunter S Thompson

God save me from him who studies but one book.
~Italian proverb

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.
~George Byron

I admit my ignorance, as the best of men will, and the port hole through which we look is narrowed with the best of us when we compare the known to the unknown.
~James Gillingham

It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality.
~Og Mandino

—

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
~Albert Camus

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.
~Charles Caleb Colton

~

Oh, my dear sir… Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant of the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn babe! ignorant as unborn twins. You don’t know anything about it! It is pitiable to see you, sir… making such an enormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your ignorance is perfectly ghastly!
~Mark Twain

Some people thought we were presenting Archie as a false character. President Nixon thought we were making a fool out of a good man.
~Carroll O’Connor

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
~Carl Jung

People are what you make them. A scornful look turns into a complete fool a man of average intelligence. A contemptuous indifference turns into an enemy a woman who, well treated, might have been an angel.
~Andre Maurois

People sometimes turn out to be almost the opposite of how they present. It isn’t because they’re trying to fool you or because they’re hypocrites. It’s because they badly want to be that thing, and so they’ll try to be it.
~Mary Gaitskill

~

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.
~Jean Paul

Fools admire, but men of sense approve.
~Alexander Pope

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
~Elbert Hubbard

—

Oh sir, we’re all fools for most of our lives. It’s unavoidable.
~Jean Valjean

If you would avoid all fools go into a dense forest and there refrain from gazing into still pools.
~Austin O’Malley

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
~Benjamin Franklin

The world is full of fools, and he who would not see it should live alone and smash his mirror.
~Claude Le Petit

Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.
~Thornton Wilder

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.
~Thomas B Macaulay

Maybe we’re all fools and none of it matters.
~Jack Crabb

~~

Prewritten Prompt: fool

~~

I find that to be a fool as to worldly wisdom, and to commit my cause to God, not fearing to offend men, who take offence at the simplicity of truth, is the only way to remain unmoved at the sentiments of others.
~John Woolman

Remember that the fool in the eyes of the gods and the fool in the eyes of man are very different.
~Oscar Wilde

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.
~Francis Bacon

I’ve never been a disciple of any school. I’ve lived too long. I’ve seen all the schools, I’ve seen people say, I’m sorry… You can only do that about three times in your life; after that, you begin to feel like a fool!
~Stuart Hall

~

Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.
~Mark Twain

If God had intended me to make excuses for who I am, He would have given me better excuses.
~Robert Brault

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee,
And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.
~Robert Frost

~

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!
~Anatole France

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.
~Albert Einstein

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
~Oliver Goldsmith

—

I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.
~Katharine Whitehorn

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
~William Drummond

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
~Sholom Aleichem

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
~Ambrose Bierce

The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep.
~Chanakya

A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
~Joseph Roux

Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.
~Elizabeth Gaskell

—

Every vice has its excuse ready.
~Publilius Syrus

The moment I make an excuse, I confess to many things.
~Muriel Strode

The person who really wants to do something finds a way; the other person finds an excuse.
~Author unknown

You can make excuses or you can get the job done, but you can’t do both.
~Hap Holmstead

Sometimes the fool who rushes in gets the job done.
~Al Bernstein~

There is no such thing as a list of reasons. There is either one sufficient reason or a list of excuses.
~Robert Brault

Excuses are reasons with a streak of jaundice.
~Henry Stanley Haskins

The trouble with always leaving yourself a way out is that you always take it.
~Robert Brault

If you always make excuses to not follow through you deserve the weight of anxiety on your chest.
~Daniel, @blindedpoet

Excuses are the tools with which incompetents build to themselves great monuments of Nothing.
~author unknown

We weave our excuses around events.
Thin, poor quality cloth of justification
Poor substitutes for the heavy tribal blankets
Once we wove to wrap our children.
~Phillip Pulfrey

The things you want to do are all up to you‒
Excuses are sabotage.
~Terri Guillemets

~

And besides, he added, forgetting that several excuses are always less convincing than one…
~Aldous Huxley

The explanation is always longer when there isn’t any.
~Robert Brault

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.
~Jonathan Swift

If your armor against the world is laziness and excuses, you’re not protecting yourself from battle and injury — you’ve trapped yourself inside with them.
~Terri Guillemets

~

It is always too hot or too cold for the man who wants to quit.
~Poor Richard Junior’s Philosophy

Intensity of desire will always find a way, just as weakness of purpose will always find an excuse.
~Muriel Strode

There is always a perfectly good excuse, always a reason not to. The hardest freedom to win is the freedom from one’s excuses.
~Robert Brault

If there is a hard-won ability I would wish to take into a second life, it is the ability to recognize tomorrow’s regret in today’s excuse.
~Robert Brault

The truly free man is the one who will turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
~Jules Renard

~

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
~Kimberly Johnson

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they make a good excuse.
~Thomas Szasz

Of all Excuses this is most forbid:
I did the Thing because the Others did.
~Arthur Guiterman

~~

§ THE EXERCISE

the dream

nothing so quaintly dear and deep
watching loved ones breathe in sleep
dreaming their other dreams exclusively
a foolish wish to enter alternatively
their door to another world
with only one key

~

cycle #7

young man in love
a fool caught in brambles,
alone in life
the cripple who stumbles,
eternal love
a commodity to sample,
death’s dictates
the prime example,
rocks of faith
pumice that crumbles
celebration of life
its tumble and scramble,
preordained end
keeping it humble

~

redefined

a fool lost in the folds of love
like grey in the crease of clouds
the wavering space between leaves
show depth in their wealth of range
showing stealth in realms of change
is merely fool and not deranged

~

a surety

the common mutt believes his nose
while a soaring hawk will trust his eyes
as words cannot capture rose
love’s unfit to penetrate disguise

one down below, another high above
whichever view there’s nothing new
a fool, as fool, will fall in love
as I indeed must fall for you

~

gone fishin‘

is it luring a fish
teasing a fish
baiting a fish
or fooling a fish
pretending love

~

yeah

this’ll warn ya
thistles harm ya
the sly confound ya
fools abound, yeah
wars alarm ya
but arms can warm ya
hold and charm ya
wrap around ya
lost and found ya

~

5s ‘n 7s

servant finger to failed fates
heartshot, open road, thumb out
blank agenda for a fool
out on a discovery
reach and search for destiny

~

humble yellow dye
deadly TNT
crucible rulers
compounding errors
dying tapestries
flowers for the fool
echo history

~

fool for the night life
cheer the music, cheer the dance
i am audience

~

a fool with no plan
a man soon slated for pain
will do it again

~

happy-at-home love
wanderlust pining away
scourges of a fool

~ ~

The Olio and Salmagundi of Quotes

He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach.
~Plutarch

Even a fool knows you can’t touch the stars, but it won’t keep the wise from trying.
~Harry Anderson

~

Thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.
~William Shakespeare

The real fool, such as the gods mock or mar, is he who does not know himself.
~Oscar Wilde

~

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
~Plato

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
~William Shakespeare

~

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.
~George Santayana

He who laughs at everything is as big a fool as he who weeps at everything.
~Baltasar Gracian

~

Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of ’em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass.
~William Congreve

Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.
~Charles Baudelaire

~

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.
~Alexander Pope

Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.
~E T Bell

~

Hurry is the weakness of fools.
~Baltasar Graciàn

The haste of a fool is the slowest thing in the world.
~Thomas Shadwell

~

Innocence and ignorance are sisters.
~Proverb

It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t.
~Mignon McLaughlin,

~

How strange to use You only live once as an excuse to throw it away. ~Bill Copeland

Many talk like philosophers, and live like fools.
~H G Bohn

~

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
~Soren Kierkegaard

There are two kinds of fools: those who can’t change their opinions and those who won’t.
~Josh Billings

~

A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.
~Edward G Bulwer-Lytton

My pungent and burning wit hath expression at both ends, and I save the arse end for fools.
~author unknown

~

You can fool people. You can fool anybody anytime of the day, but you can’t fool yourself. At night, when you go home, you’ve got to be straight up with you.
~Whitney Houston

You can fool a lot of yourself but you can’t fool the soul.
~Mary Oliver

~

Any fool knows that bravado is always a cover-up for insecurity. That’s the truth. And on that note, I’ll say goodnight. God love you.
~Bobby Darin

And here, poor fool, with all my lore
I stand no wiser than before.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

~ ~

The Olio
Quotes harvested from: https://bqotd.com, https://brainyquote.com, https://dailypnut.com, https://www.quotegarden.com, https://wisesayings.com, https://wordsmith.com

~

The Salmagundi
Video Harvest: https://vimeo.com, https://youtube.com

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~. .~