Jump To:

• Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
  Fools rush in where angels fear to tread

  Foolish people are often reckless, attempting feats that the wise avoid. This saying is from “An Essay on Criticism,” by Alexander Pope.
• fools rush in where angels fear to tread
  fools rush in where angels fear to tread

  Ignorant 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

Cultural  

1. Foolish people are often reckless, attempting feats that the wise avoid. This saying is from “An Essay on Criticism,” by Alexander Pope.

---

fools rush in where angels fear to tread Idioms  

1. Ignorant 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.”

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread fools rush in where angels fear to tread

Ronald Monsen Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

From Time Magazine Archive

Some poet has said,— "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

From Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 by Abraham Lincoln

"Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread."

From The Ladies' Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners or, Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book by Eliza Leslie

Understanding of Mickey came in rivers swift and strong, so while he wondered and while he watched entranced, over and over in his head went the line: "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

From Michael O'Halloran by Gene Stratton-Porter

I never saw a man quite so anxious to be killed; but there it is: Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

From The Ghost Breaker A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts by Paul Dickey

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 Emily Bronson Conger

Now, if fools rush in where angels fear to tread, surely they often rush to their undoing.

From At the Crossroads by Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa) Comstock

Good men had tried—but fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

From Caught by the Turks by Francis Yeats-Brown

Indeed, such efforts deserve rather the name of conjuring than of experiment; but in this, as in many other matters of life, it is true that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

From The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851 by Various

"Well, as Ma says, ignorance is bliss and fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

From Carl and the Cotton Gin by Sara Ware Bassett