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

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.
Andre Maurois

He that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he is exalted above his neighbors because he has more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine.
Jeremy Taylor

A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not.
Dalton Trumbo

Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come.
Baron de Montesquieu

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

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.
Heinrich Heine

I guess if you're stupid enough to join the army without thinking about getting shot at, then you really are a fool.
James Blunt

Fool that I was, upon my eagle's wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me.
John Dryden

Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.
John Dryden

Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.
John Dryden

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

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

A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward.
George Jean Nathan

If you wish to avoid seeing a fool you must first break your looking glass.
Francois Rabelais

The greatest misfortune of the wise man and the greatest unhappiness of the fool are based upon convention.
Franz Schubert

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.
Robertson Davies

Am I a fool? I don't think I'm a fool. But I think I sure was fooled.
Kenneth Lay

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

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