Folly

Folly

In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs. In the original use of the word, these buildings had no other use, but from the 19th to 20th centuries the term was also applied to highly decorative buildings which had secondary practical functions such as housing, sheltering or business use.

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Famous quotes containing the word folly:

    Fashionable women regard themselves, and are regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of pleasure; and the vacuity of mind, the heartlessness, the frivolity which is the necessary result of this false and debasing estimate of women, can only be fully understood by those who have mingled in the folly and wickedness of fashionable life ...
    Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)

    It is as often a weakness in the aged to dictate to the young, as it is folly in the young to slight the warnings of the aged.
    H., U.S. women’s magazine contributor. American Ladies Magazine, pp. 230-3 (May 1828)

    She had no longer any relish for her once favorite amusement of reading. And mostly she disliked those authors who have penetrated deeply into the intricate paths of vanity in the human mind, for in them her own folly was continually brought to her remembrance and presented to her view.
    Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)