"Fool's paradise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hard choice," said the young man, with a short laugh, turning toward the door. "According to you there's very little difference—a fool's paradise or a fool's hell! Well, it's one or the other for me, and I'll toss up for it to-night: heads, I lose; tails, the devil wins. Anyway, I'm sick of this, and ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... are done for," says Madam, laughing now herself. "And I only hope that handsome boy Ronayne isn't laying up sorrow for himself and living in a fool's paradise. Indeed, Olga, pretty as you are, I'll be very angry with you if I hear you have been playing ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Anglo-Saxon race, the sophistication of the English mind, and the obfuscation (which is sophistication at second-hand) of the American mind. The non-imaginative person is nowhere so much at home as in a voluntary exile; and this may be why it was sometime said that travel is the fool's paradise. For such a person to realize anything the terms are that he shall go abroad, either into an alien scene or into a period of the past; then he can begin to have some pleasure. He must first of all get away from himself, and he is not ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Hugh McInerney passing by reported that he "was after seein' the baste lanin' gathered up close agin the back of the big stone above there, wid a continted grin on the ould gob of him that 'ud frighten you wid the villiny was in it." Whereupon the two young men went to dislodge him from his fool's paradise, and the three started ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the blessing (forsooth!) of meeting, and billing and cooing every day, the two young people, your parents, went on in a fool's paradise, little heeding the world round about them, and all its tattling and meddling. Rinaldo was as brave a warrior as ever slew Turk, but you know he loved dangling in Armida's garden. Pray, my Lady Armida, what did you mean by flinging your spells over me in youth, so that ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heart grow fonder," remarked the secretary sententiously. "And you may be living in a fool's paradise. Lambert is within running-away ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... voice to tell me that I was the person to alight. I knew my doom. Farewell to all my glorious visions! I could have hurled back into the face of the laughing sun, my hate, and called him deceiver and traitor; for had he not, with other causes conspired to smile me, five minutes ago, into a fool's paradise? ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... yet they delight, Just like their betters, in whate'er they write, Hug their fool's paradise, and if you're slack To give them praise, themselves supply the lack. But he who meditates a work of art, Oft as he writes, will act the censor's part: Is there a word wants nobleness and grace, Devoid of weight, unworthy of high ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Justine Delande was completely at her ease, for well the artful renegade knew how to circle around the dangerous subject nearest his heart—the secret history of Nadine Johnstone's mother. He had dropped easily into the wooing and confidential intimacy which lulled Justine Delande into a fool's paradise of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... you think I was blind? Why did I join the strollers—the land baron accused me of following you across the country. He was right; I was following you. I would not confess it to myself before. But I confess it now! It was a fool's paradise," ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... husband did when he found a man making love to his (the Frenchman's) wife:—' Comment, Monsieur,—sans y etre oblige!' When I say this, however, I mean it only of the executive part of writing; for the imagining, the shadowing out of the future work is, I own, a delicious fool's paradise."] ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... written the same day to his brother Melius, one can see in what fool's paradise Dr. Reitz and his ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... short. "The true knowledge of it has only come to me lately. I was living in a Fool's Paradise. I could never have designed a building. I should have lived on her bounty. Thank God I was saved ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... He had a right to do what he liked with his own money. And he was n't really doing anything with it, after all, simply passing it around in a harmless circle. But would n't he be deceiving her, his best friend?—putting her in a fool's paradise? Well, by jingo, he would put her in a fool's paradise and let her revel in it, for once in her life, and before she had a chance to find out, he'd make it a real paradise—he did n't know just how, ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... their opinion is as dishonourable as to be conquered, believe that institutions which are just flickering out of existence will last for ever, and, thus overturn great States, to the destruction of themselves and all who are connected with them. Living as they do in a fool's paradise, resplendent with unreal and short-lived advantages, they forget that, as soon as they put it out of their power to hear the truth, there is no limit to the misfortunes ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... her pale face flushing with anger, "you want me to live in a fool's paradise, which may ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... beautiful Madge, for your sake I am steeping myself in infamy! It is not the first time a man has sold himself to the devil for a woman. Yet why should I feel any scruples? It would have been far worse to let them go on living in their fool's paradise." ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... down upon her with a bitter smile. "So you've had your fool's paradise? Well, once I had mine, though 'twas not your kind. 'Tis a pretty country, Audrey, but it's not long before they turn you out." She laughed somewhat drearily, then in a moment turned shrew again. "He never knew what people were saying?" she cried. "You little fool, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... cool shudder run down his spine. Rachael, reading those letters! It was unthinkable! She and the world would think him a fool! It came to him suddenly that she and the world would be right. He was a fool, and it was a fool's paradise in which he had been wandering: to take his wife and home and sons for granted, and to spend all his leisure at the feet of a calculating ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... God, I am so vexed that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave!—Pray you, sir, a word: and, as I told you, my young lady bid me enquire you out; what she bade me say I will keep to myself: but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour, as they say: for the gentlewoman is young; and, therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... monstrous that the mind refused to take it in, and he made no attempt to force himself. He asked neither whom she had married nor why she had married, nor anything else about her. It was a measure of safety. As long as he didn't know he was able to create a pretended fool's paradise of ignorance which, in his state of mind, was none the less a fool's paradise for being a pretense. Even a fool's paradise was a protection. If it hadn't been for the children, he might not have heard so ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... mocked George more subtly. A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things, and the sight of Reggie in that room reminded him that on the last occasion when they had talked together across this same table it was he who had been in a Fool's Paradise and Reggie who had borne a weight of care. Reggie this morning was brighter than the shining sun and gayer than the ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... learned," he continues presently, in a low voice, that, by a great effort, he succeeds in making calm and steady, "I cannot again unlearn! I would not if I could!—I have no desire to live in a fool's paradise! I tried hard this morning—God knows what constraint I had to put upon myself—to induce you to tell me of your own accord—to volunteer it—but you would not—you were resolutely silent. Why were you? Why were you?" (breaking off with an uncontrollable emotion). "I should not have ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... bound up in the volume A Legend of Camelot, &c., issued from the Punch office in 1898. Besides the title-piece, a satire of some length upon the mediaevalism of the pre-Raphaelites, the book contains shorter pieces—"Flirts in Hades," "Poor Pussy's Nightmare," "The Fool's Paradise, or Love and Life," "A Lost Illusion," "Vers Nonsensiques," "L'Onglay a Parry," "Two Thrones," "A Love-Agony," "A Simple Story," "A Ballad of Blunders" (after Swinburne's "Ballad of Burdens"), and then a story in prose, "The Rise and Fall of the Jack Spratts: A tale of Modern ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... animation and a spirited use of proverbial wisdom. The Land of Cokaygne is an amusing little poem of some two hundred lines, belonging to the class of fabliaux, short humorous tales or satirical pieces in verse. It describes a lubber-land, or fool's paradise, where the geese fly down all roasted on the spit, bringing garlic in the bills for their dressing, and where there is a nunnery upon a river of sweet milk, and an abbey of white monks and gray, whose walls, like the hall of little King ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... that can ever be—the sense that shall enlarge the horizon of your being, to the limits of the universe; to the boundaries of time and space; that shall lift you up into a new plane far beyond, outside all mean and miserable care for self. Why stand shrinking there? Give up the fool's paradise of 'This is I'; 'This is mine.' It is the great reality you are asked to grasp. Leap forward without fear. You shall find yourself in the ambrosial waters of Nirvana and sport with the Arhats who have conquered birth ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... fool's paradise, the statesman's scheme, The air-built castle, and the golden dream. The maid's romantic wish, the chemist's flame, And poet's vision of eternal fame. Dunciad, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... right, quite true, hanging perfectly together—except that curious falling out of a day. And then again Elinor's brain swam round and round. Had he been two days at the cottage instead of one, as he said? Was it there that the mistake lay? Had she been in such a fool's paradise having him there, that she had not marked the passage of time—had it all been one hour of happiness flying like the wind? A blush, partly of sweet shame to think that this was possible, that she might have been such a happy fool as to ignore the divisions of night and day, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... had got for other people, and came home and ate turkey and cranberry for dinner, and plum-pudding and nuts and raisins and oranges and more candy, and then went out and coasted, and came in with a stomach-ache, crying; and her papa said he would see if his house was turned into that sort of fool's paradise another year; and they had a light supper, and pretty early everybody went ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... assuredly the Dons must be aware of our route also. However, 'tis hard to make victors cautious. We had a hearty contempt for the Spaniards in Panama, and did not give them credit for pluck enough to follow us. So we journeyed along in a fool's paradise, surrounded by admiring Indians, and so laden with booty and presents that we could only move at ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... were not the only inhabitants of this fool's paradise. The local Government began planning extensive works: railways were laid out in every direction, bridges planned across rivers, which proved the despair of engineers; whilst a tunnel, the wonder of the Southern Hemisphere, was commenced through a range of hills lying between Port Lyttleton and ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... pontificate of Gregory XVI. ended on the 1st June of 1846. In spite of the care taken by those around him to keep the aged pontiff in a fool's paradise with regard to the real state of his dominions, a copy of The Late Events in Romagna fell into his hands, and considerably disturbed his peace of mind. He sent two prelates to look into the condition of ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... practically at an end, he had received a stinging rebuke from the one man in the world whose right to administer it he would have vigorously denied, and he was forced to admit to himself that his last few weeks had been spent in a fool's paradise, into which he ought never to have ventured. He had the feeling of having been pulled up sharply in the midst of a very delightful interlude—and the whole thing seemed to him to come as a warning against ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Yorkshire, and he must have seen the state of the case quite as plainly as I saw it. He has heard of your visits to the villa since your return, and has kept a close account of them, and made his own deductions, depend upon it. And some day, while you and pretty Miss Charlotte are enjoying your fool's paradise, he will pounce upon you just as puss ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... looked behind them for the Golden Age. Nowadays we trumpet the glory of our British empire; yet at intervals our confidence in its fortunes is shaken by some sharp panic; the decline and fall of England is predicted. It is, indeed, perilous to be overconfident, to live in a fool's paradise, for some of us have seen in our lifetime the sudden catastrophes that have overtaken great empires. But history may comfort us when we read how often the downfall of England has been predicted, how we have been on the brink of shooting down Niagara, as ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... his book, he thanks fortune for them. 'I might have lived and died,' he says, 'in that neat fool's paradise of secure lavishness above there. I might never have realised the gathering wrath and sorrow of the ousted and exasperated masses. In the days of my own prosperity things had seemed to me to be very well arranged.' Now from his new point of view he was to find ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... of her presence, back among the tricksters and assassins, the traps and ambushes of Wall Street, I believed again; believed firmly the promptings of the devil that possessed me. "She would have given you a brief fool's paradise," said that devil. "Then what a hideous awakening!" And I cursed the day when New York's insidious snobbishness had tempted my vanity into starting me on that degrading chase ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... said more gently. "If I have been brutal, it was merely because there was no other way to fling you head first out of your fool's paradise. If I had not known the common sense that forms the solid lower stratum of your mind, I should not have come here to say anything at all. You would not have been worth it. But remember, Marie, that under this new miracle of ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... so that in a short time her awe of this grave personage was lost in the sense of ascendency which her beauty gave her over him. It was no difficult matter—in fact it happens every day—for the beautiful woman to lull the wise man into what is not inaptly called a fool's paradise. The sage was induced to attempt feats of youth which his years rendered ridiculous; he could command the elements, but the common course of nature was beyond his power. When, therefore, he exerted his magic strength, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the good of the whole and not of any one part. If I went to a sculptor and blamed him for having painted the eye, which is the noblest feature of the face, not purple but black, he would reply: 'The eye must be an eye, and you should look at the statue as a whole.' 'Now I can well imagine a fool's paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking, clothed in purple and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and have their wheel at hand, that they may work a little when they please; and cobblers and all ...
— The Republic • Plato |
