There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
quote by Samuel Butler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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He that has no fools, knaves, or beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.
You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.
quote by Giacomo Casanova
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike-and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two-are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.
quote by Harold Bloom
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
quote by Ambrose Bierce
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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History is an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
quote by Ambrose Bierce
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.
quote by Philip Stanhope
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.
quote by John Greenleaf Whittier
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Long Live Apartheid
I was feeling sad and red,
I didn’t know, which way, nation was going.
There were quotas all around,
Communal, caste, gender, language, regional and physical,
And what not, do not know.
Quota in the air, quota in the sky,
Quota in the ground,
Quotas everywhere.
We are here as in a caste republic,
Swept with the farce of equality and secularism,
Where racism is the grating roar,
Bring the eternal note of discrimination.
Alas! There was no peace,
No help for needy poor, dying farmers,
Braving soldiers and wailing widows,
Where racial leaders loot day, in and day out.
Looking high and low, reservation every where,
Merit was trampled underneath the boots,
It was wailing in the brutal world,
Humanity and merit was burning.
It was not a wild fire,
It was the fire of innocence,
Youth, merit and justice,
And knaves were counting their votes.
They were not the brokers of social justice,
They were not the paid ponies of secularism,
But it was the truth burning for justice,
It was the merit crying for honor.
The knaves were dancing on their pyre,
Waiting for another pray, to be burnt alive,
They were cruel masters and have no pain,
Butchers were shining the dagger to stab merit.
They died for justice, vultures live for injustice,
They died for merit, they live for destruction,
They died for truth, they live for farce,
They died for the nation, they live for decay.
Remember it was not a simple fire,
The hot blaze will burn the knaves,
One day the butchers will get the message,
Or else, as in the past, nation will be devoured by slavery,
Ah God we shall be true to our nation,
Long live constitution of India,
Long live our racial leaders,
Long live apartheid’
From:
DR. Yogesh SHARMA
poem by Dr. Yogesh Sharma
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XXXVIII
``I do not doubt it. You have a look of truth
Which is beyond suspicion. But the world
Is as full of knaves as fools. You have your youth
And I my wisdom. Then your head is curled
Just as I like it, and your face is smooth,
And it can blush like your red innocent hands.
I saw it in an instant in the booth
That we should know each other and be friends.
It does not do to question. Look at me.
I am not pretty, yet the world's best sense
Has raved about my beauty foolishly
These five years past in every mood and tense!
Say. Would you like we should be friends for good?''
Not knowing what I said, I said I would.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Love's Astrology
I know not if they erred
Who thought to see
The tale of all the times to be,
Star-character'd;
I know not, neither care,
If fools or knaves they were.
But this I know: last night
On me there shone
Two stars
that made all stars look wan
And shamèd quite,
Wherefrom the soul of me
Divined her destiny.
poem by William Watson
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Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
Herman Melville in Moby Dick
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The hatred of knaves is to be preferred to their company.
Slender: I'll ne'er be drunk whilst I live again, but in honest, civil, godly company, for this trick: if I be drunk, I'll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves.
line from The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1602)
Submitted by Dan CostinaÅŸ
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To A Disciple Of William Morris
Stand fast by the ideal. Hero be,
You in your youth, as he from youth to age.
Dare to be last, least, in good modesty,
Nor fret thy soul for speedier heritage.
Even as he lived, live thou, laborious, sage,
Yielding thy flower, leaf, fruitage seasonably,
Content if but some beauty in Time's page
Out of thy being spring and live through thee.
Churl Fame shall grudge (ah, let it grudge!) thee glory.
Knaves have earned that. Behold, the blossoming thorn
Emblazoneth the hedge where fools made foray,
Redeemeth their sad flouts and jibes forlorn.
Ere thou shalt guess, the nightingale thy story
Learning shall speak of thee and shame their scorn.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Honest men are the soft easy cushions on which knaves repose and fatten.
quote by Thomas Otway
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Priestly knaves sweat hard at their meat, but never at work get into a heat.
A Man's a Man for A' That
Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that.
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
poem by Robert Burns
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Prologue to the True Widow
Heaven save ye, gallants, and this hopeful age!
Y' are welcome to the downfall of the stage.
The fools have laboured long in their vocation,
And vice, the manufacture of the nation,
O'erstocks the town so much, and thrives so well,
That fops and knaves grow drugs, and will not sell.
In vain our wares on theatres are shown,
When each has a plantation of his own.
His cruse ne'er fails; for whatsoe'er he spends,
There's still God's plenty for himself and friends.
Should men be rated by poetic rules,
Lord, what a poll would there be raised from fools!
Meantime poor wit prohibited must lie,
As if 'twere made some French commodity.
Fools you will have, and raised at vast expense;
And yet, as soon as seen, they give offence.
Time was, when none would cry,—That oaf was me;
But now you strive about your pedigree.
Bauble and cap no sooner are thrown down,
But there's a muss of more than half the town.
Each one will challenge a child's part at least;
A sign the family is well increased.
Of foreign cattle there's no longer need,
When we're supplied so fast with English breed.
Well! flourish, countrymen; drink, swear, and roar;
Let every free-born subject keep his whore,
And wandering in the wilderness about,
At end of forty years not wear her out.
But when you see these pictures, let none dare
To own beyond a limb, or single share;
For where the punk is common, he's a sot,
Who needs will father what the parish got.
poem by John Dryden
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Include Me Out
I grabbed the new Who's Who to see
My name - but it was not.
Said I: "The form they posted me
I filled and sent - so what?"
I searched the essies," dour with doubt . . .
Darn! It was plain as day
The scurvy knaves had left me out . . .
Oh was I mad? I'll say.
Then all at once I sensed the clue;
'Twas simple, you'll allow . . .
The book I held was Who WAS Who -
Oh was I glad - and how!
poem by Robert William Service
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