There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.
Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life.
Fools’ teacher is not logic but calamity.
As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not; so men are proved, by their speeches, whether they be wise or foolish.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
There is only a finger's difference between a wise man and a fool.
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.
Those who consider weak the people mastered by their passions are like that crazy doctor who named a man to be fool just because he had seen him suffering of fever.
“However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.”
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
The fool knows after he has suffered.
Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment.
We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
One can fool life for a long time, but in the end it always makes us what we were intended to be.
“Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!”(his last words)
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
I know the dark delight of being strange, The penalty of difference in the crowd, The loneliness of wisdom among fools...
At times discretion should be thrown aside, and with the foolish we should play the fool.
Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.
A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool.
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.
God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.
One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (said in 1888).
Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth.
Wise people speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.
Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and even sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.
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.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.
The greatest misfortune of the wise man and the greatest unhappiness of the fool are based upon convention.
Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
Dare to wear the foolish clown face.
Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right
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.
“The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.
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.
Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.
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.