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:

    Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
    You’ve played, and loved, and eat, and drunk your fill:
    Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age
    Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage:
    Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,
    Whom Folly pleases, and whose follies please.
    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

    The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)

    The preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or ... delusion.
    Derek Jarman (b. 1942)