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Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
Fools rush in where angels fear to treadFoolish people are often reckless, attempting feats that the wise avoid. This saying is from “An Essay on Criticism,” by Alexander Pope.
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fools rush in where angels fear to tread
fools rush in where angels fear to treadIgnorant or inexperienced individuals get involved in situations that wiser persons would avoid, as in I've never heard this symphony and here I am conducting it—oh well, fools rush in where angels fear to tread, or He tried to mediate their unending argument—fools rush in. This expression, so well known it is sometimes shortened as in the second example, is a quotation from Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism (1709): “No place so sacred from such fops is barr'd ... Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead; For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
CulturalExample Sentences
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The poem abounds in such lines as these:— "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
From Halleck's New English Literature by Halleck, Reuben Post
It wasn't that I am so helpful, but that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
From Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Stewart, Elinore Pruitt
It has been said that fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
From An Ohio Woman in the Philippines Giving personal experiences and descriptions including incidents of Honolulu, ports in Japan and China by Conger, Emily Bronson
It is a path where "fools rush in where angels fear to tread".
From America, through the spectacles of an Oriental diplomat by Wu, Tingfang
The whole boundless congregation of mankind, with its everlasting varieties, is thus at once subjected to the sentence of every pretender: And fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.
From Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries Interspersed with Some Particulars Respecting the Author by Godwin, William
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.