Folly Sentence Examples

I saw the folly of my forefathers in the histories.

I say, this is folly!

It would have been folly after that experience to risk defeat and perhaps disaster in assailing formidable positions, effectively held and assiduously fortified.

It is folly to speak of a donation of lands which did not belong to the pope, or to maintain that the freedom of the Americans was extinguished by the decision of Alexander VI.

Nothing material is worth a thought; anxiety is folly; your Father, who feeds His birds and clothes His flowers, will feed and clothe you.

If he killed her, Kris would finally see the folly of his ways.

Growing up I had a white welsh pony named Folly.

The issues are altogether too gigantic for such faith to be other than utter folly.

He told a parable about the folly of focusing on material wealth.

The wallabies found at Folly Farm are Bennett's wallabies, the Tasmanian subspecies of the red-necked wallaby.

Her sublime folly turned out to be wiser than their wisdom; in two months, from May to July 1429, she had freed Orleans, destroyed the prestige of the English army at Patay, and dragged the doubting and passive king against his will to be crowned at Reims. All this produced a marvellous revulsion of political feeling throughout France, Charles VII.

Save us from self-justifying histories and from moral equations that excuse our folly.

I considered using the tools available as weapons but dismissed the action as folly.

At the moment, hiding anything from Alex would be folly.

In the presence of the rising storm the duchess was bewildered, seeing clearly the folly of the policy she was obliged to carry out no less than its difficulty.

Faringdon House, close to the church, was built by Henry James Pye (1745-1813), poet laureate from 1790 to 1813, who also caused to be planted the conspicuous group of fir-trees on the hill east of the town called Faringdon Clump, or locally (like other similar groups) the Folly.

After three such good fortunes by marriage Norfolk in his folly looked for a crown with a fourth match, listening to the laird of Lethington when he set forth the scheme by which the duke was to marry a restored queen of Scots and rule Scotland with her who should be recognized as Elizabeth's successor.

After the declaration of independence the history of Uruguay becomes a record of intrigues, financial ruin, and political folly and crime.

They make counter attacks on polytheism as a folly and on the shamefulness of obscene myths.

It may suffice to repeat that no domestic tragedy has ever taught with more effective simplicity and thrilling truthfulness the homely double lesson of the folly of selfishness and the mad rashness of crime.

The figures are no longer abstractions; they are concrete examples of the folly of the bibliophile who collects books but learns nothing from them, of the evil judge who takes bribes to favour the guilty, of the old fool whom time merely strengthens in his folly, of those who are eager to follow the fashions, of the priests who spend their time in church telling "gestes" of Robin Hood and so forth.

The officer points out the folly of such a course, and the certainty that the republic, whose troops had triumphed over those of Prussia and Austria, will speedily disperse the untrained levies of Provence.

The parallel extends even to the secret negotiations; for, if Austria could have been induced in May 1807 to send an army against Napoleon's communications, his position would have been fully as dangerous as before Austerlitz if Prussia had taken a similar step. Once more he triumphed owing to the timidity of the central power which had the game in its hands; and the folly which marked the Russian tactics at Friedland (14th of June 1807), as at Austerlitz, enabled him to close the campaign in a blaze of glory and shiver the coalition in pieces.

The folly of the monarchs of the Holy Alliance in Europe gained for the writings of Montholon and Las Cases (that of Gourgaud was not published till 1899) a ready reception, with the result that Napoleon reappeared in the literature of the ensuing decades wielding an influence scarcely less potent than that of the grey-coated figure into whose arms France flung herself on his return from Elba.

It was, however, by their own folly that the Franks lost Jerusalem in 1244.

Resolute in recognizing erudition as the chief concern of man, he sighed over the folly of popes and princes, who spent their time in wars and ecclesiastical disputes when they might have been more profitably employed in reviving the lost learning of antiquity.

In 1862 he published his pamphlet entitled The Three Panics, the object of which was to trace the history and expose the folly of those periodical visitations of alarm as to French designs with which England had been afflicted for the preceding fifteen or sixteen years.

But although silenced the prophet was doomed, and the folly of his disciples precipitated his fate.

Realizing his folly he abdicated on the 6th of December 1796, and retired to Sardinia, That princess, in spite of her French origin, resisted the attempts of France, then dominated by Cardinal Richelieu, to govern Savoy, but her quarrels with her brothers-in-law led to civil war, in which the latter obtained the help of Spain, and Christina that of France.

But in that case we must either reject the testimony of the same Hegesippus that up to their death, and that of Symeon son of Clopas, successor in the Jerusalem see of James the Lord's brother, " who suffered martyrdom at the age of one hundred and twenty years while Trajan was emperor and Atticus governor," " the church (universal) had remained a pure and uncorrupted virgin " free from " the folly of heretical teachers "; or else we must reject the superscription, which presents the grandfather in vehement conflict with the very heresies in question.

It contains incomparable studies of the Florentine housewife and her husband, a grave business-like citizen, who falls into the senile folly of a base intrigue.

The statement 28 that God " chargeth His angels with folly " applies to all angels.

In it kings and princes, bishops and popes alike are shown to be in bondage to Folly; and no class of men is spared.

There is only one answer; the principal cause of this complete and irretrievable collapse is to be sought for in the folly, egotism and selfishness of the Polish gentry, whose insane dislike of all discipline, including even the salutary discipline of regular government, converted Poland into something very like a primitive tribal community at the very time when every European statesman, including the more enlightened of the Poles themselves, clearly recognized that the political future belonged to the strongly centralized monarchies, which were everywhere rising on the ruins of feudalism.

During the six years which preceded his deposition in 1091, El Motamid behaved with valour on the field, but with much meanness and political folly.

While in this phase he wrote his novels Yeast and Alton Locke, in which, though he pointed out unsparingly the folly of extremes, he certainly sympathized not only with the poor, but with much that was done and said by the leaders in the Chartist movement.

The Protestants were now at the height of their power, but their ascendancy was about to be destroyed, and that rather by the folly and imprudence of their leaders than by the skill and valour of their foes.

For some time Abbas Hilmi clung to his idea of liberating himself from all control, and secretly encouraged a nationalist and antiBritish agitation in the native press; but he gradually came to perceive the folly, as well as the danger to himself, of such a course, and accordingly refrained from giving any overt occasion for complaint or protest.

It would be folly to think of introducing unrestricted parliamentary government at present, the conditions for its successful working not existing.

His character for pettishness and folly was thus amply illustrated.

He was disliked by the citizens of London; and this ill-feeling was heightened when Gloucester, who was a favourite of the Londoners, returned to England and was doubtless reproached by Beaufort for the folly of his undertaking.

The contrast is marked by the humour which seems to combine a cynical view of human folly with a deeply pathetic sense of the sadness and suffering of life.

From this crowning folly death delivered him on the 22nd of February 1371.

James declined to commit this chivalrous folly; but, for lack of scouts, permitted Surrey to out-manoeuvre him and pass, concealed by a range of hills, across his front, to a position north of Flodden, on his lines of communication.

But Elizabeth had seen Arran in London and had probably detected his hysterical folly.

It abounds in error as to matters of fact, contradicts human experience, reason and morals, and is one tissue of folly, deceit, enthusiasm, selfishness and crime.

His homilies, which are still preserved, furnish ample apology for the partiality of the people, exhibiting the free command of a pure and copious vocabulary, an inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes, giving variety and grace to the most familiar topics, with an almost dramatic exposure of the folly and turpitude of vice, and a deep moral earnestness.

He was an eye-witness on more than one occasion of the folly and excesses of the French Revolution; and these scenes not only increased his love for his church, but strongly impressed him with that dread of anarchy, of popular movements ending in bloodshed, and of communistic and socialistic views which characterized him in after life.

But a dispute between the king and the parliament concerning the form of the royal oath having arisen, a group of demagogues with criminal folly provoked disturbances and erected barricades (May 14th).

Ibn Zobair refused haughtily, and Hosain, with a contemptuous criticism of his folly, ordered his army to break up for Syria.

There are, moreover, numerous passages in the sacred books of the East, especially those of the Buddhists, which warn the student against the assumption that "magical" performances of any kind are to be regarded as proving the truth of the performer's teaching; and indeed it must be owned in justice to the theosophists that similar warnings are to be found scattered throughout their writings; while even Madame Blavatsky herself was wont to expatiate on the folly of accepting her "phenomena" as the mark of spiritual truth.

Llewelyn was, however, foolish enough to lose the results of this very favourable treaty by intriguing with the de Montfort family, and in 1273 he became betrothed to Eleanor de Montfort, the old Earl's only daughter, a piece of political folly which may possibly in some degree account for Edward's harsh treatment of the Welsh prince.

To this accumulation of inflammatory materials a spark was put in 1857 by an act of almost incredible folly on the part of the military authorities in India.

It is so true, so entirely based upon the facts of human nature, that the question what particular class of persons supplied the author with his examples of folly or misdoing, however interesting to the commentator, may be neglected by the reader.

As president of the elder society he had already in 1892 foreshadowed the ideals of the League in a lecture entitled " The necessity for de-anglicizing the Irish nation," not, he explained " as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English."

He was educated at Westminster school and at St Edmund's Hall, Oxford, where, while an undergraduate, he published several translations of Latin works, including Erasmus In Praise of Folly.

Edom is attacked by his own allies, and his folly appears in that he exposes himself to such treachery.

The catechetic course included instruction in monotheism, in the folly of polytheism, in the Christian scheme of salvation, &c. (c) They were again and again exorcized, in order to rid them of the lingering taint of the worship of demons.

It was over this Sicilian scheme, the crowning folly of the king, that public opinion at last grew so hot that the intermittent criticism and grumbling of the baronage and the nation passed into vigorous and masterful action.

This surrender put the crown to his cation of career of folly.

His genius and the dauphins murderous act of folly at Montereau conspired to make the incredible almost possible.

To tamper with a constitution that had so proved its quality seemed not so much a sacrilege as a folly.

The criminal folly of the raid prevented the British gQvernment from making this demand.

He despised the weakness and the folly of the émigrés and excluded them from his councils.

Towards Great Britain the executive council and the Convention behaved with singular folly.

Lactantius (circa 300 A.D.), for example, roundly declares that Plato and Aristotle, referring everything to this earthly life, " made virtue mere folly "; though himself maintaining, with pardonable inconsistency, that man's highest good did not consist in mere pleasure, but in the consciousness of the filial relation of the soul to God.

Venizelos spent that winter and spring (1915-6) in endeavouring, through the press (he founded a newspaper called the Keryx), and by public mass meetings, to force the King to see the folly of his course.

The task was now to repair these four years of madness and folly.

Owing largely to the folly of his Greek servant, who, without his master's knowledge, threw overboard the drinking-water to lighten the boat, the explorer after circumnavigating the sea reached Jericho in an exhausted condition, and was there attacked by a severe fever.

The disastrous Balkan campaign of 1828 was an even more astounding revelation of corruption, disorganization and folly in high places; and the presence of the emperor did nothing to mitigate the attendant evils.

Putting such a thing behind him was difficult, but it would be folly to forget the lessons he had learned with that experience.

It would have been folly to explain to him that he was the first man to affect her so dynamically, but she didn't want to leave him with the impression that she was a nymph either.

To cut ourselves off from the major strategic alliance on our doorstep would be an act of supreme folly.

These intricate drawings, whilst reminiscent of old-fashioned comic books or medieval illuminated manuscripts, are timeless, like the human folly they depict.

Nor could the heroism and the folly be kept apart, for there were few who could quite escape the contagion of the times.

But it is the mark of utter folly and complete credulity.

Just as Ripley Holden's ' progress ' involved socially disruptive folly.

The second, a moving evocation of the folly of war gives the book its title.

Gogol, described as " the Russian Dickens ", wrote this monumental farce about human greed and folly in 1835.

This immediately exposes the folly of using the same advisor.

Now, too late, I realized mu folly.

We want to make it clear that wc do not commit the folly of confounding the Communist Party with the fascists.

It demonstrated the folly of preventive war fought without international support.

The current shambles illustrates the folly of allowing Mr Clarke to stay on to sort out the mess.

Yet they had to witness this utter folly of death by drug addiction.

To do otherwise is, to me, sheer folly.

A monumental folly of the highest order which would have seen any respectable company or trade union chairman vacate his seat.

Esthetic convention allows that an architectural folly, well executed, can achieve a real artistic integrity in its deliberate incompleteness.

Take her out to a local fort or a Victorian folly.

In the Victorian era it was partly demolished to provide building material for a garden folly in the manor grounds.

The tower is an eighteenth century folly built in an effort to raise the height of the hill to 1000ft.

Folly Farm includes rare animals, birds of prey and an old time funfair.

Hegel and Nietzsche had glimmerings of the idea, but it is described very fully and simply in the Book of Wisdom or Folly.

April 2006 Staff at Folly Farm's zoo are ecstatic this Easter, with the successful breeding of their endangered lemurs.

My wit, being folly, is not by your wise man understood; there- fore, I'll to the purpose.

I personally am incredibly upset by this folly knowing there are only 4 PRTs in Iraq and they are all performing sub par.

During the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 Visconti Venosta labored to maintain the Europe-an concert, joined Great Britain in preserving Greece from the worst consequences of her folly, and lent moral and material aid in establishing an autonomous government in Crete.

With the rebellion of her Eldest Daughter, the Roman Church could not continue in her old attitude of uncompromising hostility towards United Italy, and the Vatican began to realize the folly of placing every Italian in the dilemma of being either a good Italian or a good Catholic, when the majority wished to be both.

Yet it may be doubted whether any such division can be safely assumed; and it may suffice to repeat that no domestic tragedy has ever taught with more effective simplicity and thrilling truthfulness the homely double lesson of the folly of selfishness and the mad rashness of crime.

The government were anxious to save him from the consequences of his own folly, and Lord Clare said to a member of his family, "for God's sake get this young man out of the country; the ports shall be thrown open, and no hindrance whatever offered."

But scattered through all these alternate outbursts of hope and despair we find precious lessons of purest morality, and solemn warnings against the tricks and perfidy of the world, the vanity of all earthly splendour and greatness, the folly and injustice of men, and the hypocrisy, frivolity and viciousness of fashionable society and princely courts in particular.

Lessing had given the first impetus to the formation of a national literature by exposing the folly of the current imitation of French writers.

He enlarges in particular upon what he considers the folly of the declaration of war upon Russia (see Bethmann Hollweg).

The dissidence of dissent, however, filled him with uneasiness, and he abhorred Luther's denial of free will and his exaggerated notion of man's utter depravity; in short, he did nothing whatever to promote the Protestant revolt, except so far as his frank denunciation and his witty arraignment of clerical and monastic weaknesses and soulless ceremonial, especially in his Praise of Folly and Colloquies, contributed to bring the faults of the Church into strong relief, and in so far as his edition of the New Testament furnished a simple escape from innumerable theological complications.

El Motamid, in a moment of folly and rage, crucified the Jew and imprisoned the Christian members of the mission.

It was won by the generalship of Bruce and his captains; by the excellence of his position, by the steadiness of his men, and, obviously, by the reckless fury of the English cavalry, and by the folly which left their archers open to defeat by the Marischal's handful of horse (24th of June 1314).

To the philosophers (with the single exception of Plato), however, convinced as they were that the multitude must necessarily miss true well-being through their folly and ignorance, it could never occur to guard against these evils by any other method than that of providing philosophic instruction for the few; whereas the Christian clergy, whose function it was to offer truth and eternal life to all mankind, naturally regarded theological misbelief as insidious preventible contagion.

That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.

Because the dreaded damp comes from above, it seems like folly to redecorate without first titivating the roof and chimney-stacks.

The wallabies found at Folly Farm are Bennett 's wallabies, the Tasmanian subspecies of the red-necked wallaby.

The town fortune teller is thought by most to speak only folly, but I believe that his prophecies are truly vatic.

Named "Lyndenhurst" by the mayor for the abundant linden trees on the property, it was commonly known as "Paulding's Folly."

As Parmelee put it, the idea that nudists want to discard anything artificial or man-made was "manifest folly" (p. 15).

Of course, these games add a bit of fun and folly to the tasks of baby bathing, diaper changes, feeding, and chasing that are all part of the child care routine.

When the weather warms up, visitors flock to outdoor recreation areas such as Beach-walker Park and Folly Beach County Park.

Still, admitting to any attraction seemed folly.

He was deeply impressed with the folly of such a project, and he was seized with a strong desire to go up to London and deliver his sentiments on the subject.

Owing to this officer's presumptuous folly Grant's information only reached the duke on June 18, too late to be of use.

Kanaris was undoubtedly aided by the almost incredible sloth and folly of his opponents, but he chose his time well, and the service of the fireships was always considered peculiarly dangerous.

Babington's conduct was marked by open folly and vanity.

Under such circumstances it would be folly to look upon them as anything but late productions, at all events later than the Early Version, and equal folly to assign these bulky volumes to the last two years of Wycliffe's 3 See Paues, op. cit.

He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha, whom he had known from a child, with this new conception of her baseness, folly, and cruelty.

Now, however, I see the folly of attempting to hitch one's wagon to a star with harness that does not belong to it.

He considered once more the folly of his undertaking, but pushed away his second thoughts.