Quotes from Praise of Folly

Quotations follow the Betty Radice translation (Penguin Classics, 1993) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

2. 3

   It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.

3. 4

   What is all this life but a kind of comedy, wherein men walk up and down in one another's disguises and act their respective parts, till the property-man brings them back to the attiring house.

4. 5

   I am, as you see, that true and only giver of wealth whom the Greeks call Moria, the Latins Stultitia, and our plain English Folly.

5. 6

   'Tis a sad thing, they say, to be mistaken. Nay rather, he is most miserable that is not so.

6. 7

   Fortune loves those that have least wit and most confidence... But wisdom makes men bashful, which is the reason that those wise men have so little to do, unless it be with poverty, hunger, and chimney corners.

7. 8

   What man is that would submit his neck to the noose of wedlock, if, as wise men should, he did but first truly weigh the inconvenience of the thing?

8. 9

   Invite a wise man to a feast and he'll spoil the company, either with morose silence or troublesome disputes.

9. 10

   I am that she, that only she, whose deity recreates both gods and men.

10. 11

    Wherefore farewell, clap your hands, live and drink lustily, my most excellent disciples of Folly.

11. 12

    I am so necessary to the making of all society and manner of life both delightful and lasting, that neither would the people long endure their governors, nor the servant his master.

12. 13

    He may lawfully praise himself that lives far from neighbors.

13. 14

    It is an old proverb, "I hate one that remembers what's done over the cup." This is a new one of my own making: I hate a man that remembers what he hears.