"I have great faith in fools - my friends call it self-confidence."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
— Henry David Thoreau

"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true."
— Søren Kierkegaard

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool."
— T.S. Eliot

"Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words."
— William Faulkner (Mosquitoes: A Novel)

"If it is ones lot to be cast among fools, one must learn foolishness.-The Count of Monte Cristo"
— Alexandre Dumas

"Love? Sodding, bloody, tossing, bloody, sodding, bloody love? Irrelevant, superfluous, bloody, ruddy, rotten, sodding love? What ho? Wherefore? What the f*ck? Love?"
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

""What is your name?" asked Lear.
"Caius," said Kent.
"And whence do you hail?"
"From Bonking, sire."
"Well, yes, lad, as do we all," said Lear, "but from what town?""
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

"I pity the fool that never stopped to play and worked his life into the grave"
— D.C. Bussey

"Sarcasm will make your tits fall off."
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

"I was seven before I realized that you could eat breakfast with your pants on."
— Christopher Moore

"A hundred brilliant witticisms died suffocating on the captain's heavy glove. Thus muted, I pumped my codpiece at the duke and tried to force a fart, but my bum tumpet could find no note."
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

"Next out of the hall came the sisters and their husbands. Before I could say anything, the captain had clamped his hand over my mouth and was lifting me off my feet as I kicked. Cornwall made as to draw his dagger, but Regan pulled him away. "You've just won a kingdom, my duke, killing vermin is a servant's task. Leave the bitter fool stew in his own bile."
She wanted me. It was clear."
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

"Soon a whole guild of low-priced shrine keepers around Europe named their own pope - Boldface the Relatively Shameless, Discount Pope of Prague. The price war was on [...] The Retail Pope would offer cheesy bacon toppings on the Host with communion and the Discount Pope would counter with topless nun night for midnight mass."
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.



"
— Samuel Johnson

"Olivia: What's a drunken man like, fool?
Feste: Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him. "
— William Shakespeare

""Ydych chi'n cymryd cerdynnau credid?" said the highwayman, no doubt trying to frighten me further, his consonants chained like anal beads strung out of hell's own bunghole."
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

"'Money is the root of all evil.' Then we hear, 'A fool and his money are soon parted.' What are they talking about? If money is so evil, shouldn't it be, 'A wise man and his money are soon parted'? And another thing, how does a fool get money in the first place? I know some fools who have a lot of money, but they won't tell me how they got it, and I won't tell them."
— George Burns (Doctor Burn's Prescription for Happiness)

""[...] Y'know, the Duchess Regan is living here at the tower now? I took your advice about not talking about her boffnacity [footnote], even with the duke dead and all, can't be too careful. Although, I caught sight of her in a dressing gown one day she was up on the parapet outside her solar. Fine flanks on that princess, despite the danger of death and all for sayin' so, sir." -Yeomen
"Aye, the lady is fair, and her gadonk as fine as frog fur [...]" -Pocket

footnote: Boffnacity: an expression of shagnatiousness, fit. from the Latin boffusnatious"
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

""Not yet!" said she [Goneril], trying to roll me over and get back to smacking my bum.
She honked my codpiece.
"You honked my codpiece."
"Aye, give it up, fool." [...]"
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

""I'll not have an exchange with an impudent fool." [Oswald]
"He's not impudent," said Jones [the puppet]. "With proper inspiration, the lad sports a woody as stout as a mooring pin. Ask your lady."
I nodded in agreement with the puppet, for his most wise for having a brain of sawdust.
"Impudent! Impudent! Not impotent!" said Oswald, frothing a bit now."
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

""Advice, then, young yeoman: When referring to the king's middle daughter, state that she is fair, speculate that she is pious, but unless you'd like to spend your watch looking for the box where your head is kept, resist the urge to wax ignorant on her naughty bits." -Pocket
"I don't know what that means, sir." -Yeoman
"Speak not of Regan's shaggacity, son" [...] -Pocket"
— Christopher Moore

""I'm beginning to wonder," said Kent, sitting down now on an overturned wooden tub. "Who do I serve? Why am I here?"

"You are here, because, in the expanding ethical ambiguity of our situation, you are steadfast in your righteousness. It is to you, our banished friend, that we all turn—a light amid the dark dealings of family and politics. You are the moral backbone on which the rest of us hang our bloody bits. Without you we are merely wiggly masses of desire writhing in our own devious bile."

"Really?" asked the old knight.

"Aye," said I.

"I'm not sure I want to keep company with you lot, then.""
— Christopher Moore (Fool: A Novel)

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."
— Jim Elliot (Journals of Jim Elliot)