Vulgar words in The Praise of Folly (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 35 ~ ~ ~
But if you ask me why I appear before you in this strange dress, be pleased to lend me your ears, and I'll tell you; not those ears, I mean, you carry to church, but abroad with you, such as you are wont to prick up to jugglers, fools, and buffoons, and such as our friend Midas once gave to Pan.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 188 ~ ~ ~
Insomuch that if they find no occasion of laughter, they send for "one that may make it," or hire some buffoon flatterer, whose ridiculous discourse may put by the gravity of the company.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 447 ~ ~ ~
For neither he that having weak eyes should take a mule for an ass, nor he that should admire an insipid poem as excellent would be presently thought mad; but he that not only errs in his senses but is deceived also in his judgment, and that too more than ordinary and upon all occasions-- he, I must confess, would be thought to come very near to it.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 448 ~ ~ ~
As if anyone hearing an ass bray should take it for excellent music, or a beggar conceive himself a king.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 687 ~ ~ ~
At these, if ever they fall athwart them, they prick up--as whether there was any instant of time in the generation of the Second Person; whether there be more than one filiation in Christ; whether it be a possible proposition that God the Father hates the Son; or whether it was possible that Christ could have taken upon Him the likeness of a woman, or of the devil, or of an ass, or of a stone, or of a gourd; and then how that gourd should have preached, wrought miracles, or been hung on the cross; and what Peter had consecrated if he had administered the Sacrament at what time the body of Christ hung upon the cross; or whether at the same time he might be said to be man; whether after the Resurrection there will be any eating and drinking, since we are so much afraid of hunger and thirst in this world.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 789 ~ ~ ~
so void of wit and so little to the purpose that it may be truly called an ass's playing on the harp.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 870 ~ ~ ~
Again, if a man sue for honors or church preferments, an ass or wild ox shall sooner get them than a wise man.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 931 ~ ~ ~
Especially when a no small professor, whose name I wittingly conceal lest those choughs should chatter at me that Greek proverb I have so often mentioned, "an ass at a harp," discoursing magisterially and theologically on this text, "I speak as a fool, I am more," drew a new thesis; and, which without the height of logic he could never have done, made this new subdivision--for I'll give you his own words, not only in form but matter also--"I speak like a fool," that is, if you look upon me as a fool for comparing myself with those false apostles, I shall seem yet a greater fool by esteeming myself before them; though the same person a little after, as forgetting himself, runs off to another matter.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 979 ~ ~ ~
And therefore he chose rather to ride upon an ass when, if he had pleased, he might have bestrode the lion without danger.