Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy!

-Milton,John
c.1631  Of the nightingale. Il Penseroso, l.61^2.

   All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded, wisdom in discourse with her Loses discount'nanced, and like folly shows.

-Milton,John
   Adam speaking of Eve. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.8, l.551^3.

   Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies, And catch the Manners living as they rise. Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to man. See Milton 580:93.

-Pope, Alexander
  An Essay on Man, epistle1, l.13^16.

It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to makethantobuy.Thetaylordoesnot attempttomakehis ownshoe†All ofthemfind itfor their interestto employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours and to purchase with a part of its produce†whatever else they have occasion for† What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom† Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.4, ch.2.

The obstinancy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinancy of follyand inanity.

-Stowe, Harriet (Elizabeth) ne¤  e Beecher
  Little Foxes, ch.4.

The passionate heart of the poet is whirled into folly and vice.

-Tennyson
  Maud, pt.1, sect.4, stanza 7, l.139.

This mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights' with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor sex is bent, forgetting everysense of womanly feeling and propriety. Lady Amberley ought to get a good whipping.

-Victoria in full  Alexandrina Victoria
  Letter to SirTheodore Martin, 29 Mar.The feminist Lady Amberley was Bertrand Russell's mother.

   A dead reign†a strange epoch of folly and shame.

-Zola, EŁ  mile
On the France of the Second Empire. Quoted inJoanna Richardson LaVie Parisienne (1971), p.276.