Слово "folly". Англо-русский словарь Мюллера

I sighed, and then looked up to find Mr Porrott eyeing me sympathetically. He seemed an understanding little man. ‘Will you go there, yes?’ he asked. I shook my head with a sigh. ‘I could have gone,’ I said. ‘A year ago. But I was foolish and worse than foolish - greedy. I risked the substance for the shadow.’ ‘I comprehend,’ said Mr Porrott. ‘You speculated?’ I nodded mournfully, but in spite of myself I felt secretly entertained. This ridiculous little man was so portentously solemn. ‘Not the Porcupine Oilfields?’ he asked suddenly. I stared. ‘I thought of them, as a matter of fact, but in the end I plumped for a gold mine in Western Australia.’ My neighbour was regarding me with a strange expression which I could not fathom. ‘It is Fate,’ he said at last. ‘What is Fate?’ I asked irritably. ‘That I should live next to a man who seriously considers Porcupine Oilfields, and also West Australian Gold Mines. Tell me, have you also a penchant for auburn hair?’ I stared at him open-mouthed, and he burst out laughing. ‘No, no, it is not the insanity that I suffer from. Make your mind easy. It was a foolish question that I put to you there, for, you see, my friend of whom I spoke was a young man, a man who thought all women good, and most of them beautiful. But you are a man of middle age, a doctor, a man who knows the folly and the vanity of most things in this life of ours.

“It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.”

The serious piece of folly had been to come back here in the first place, after buying the diary and without knowing whether the proprietor of the shop could be trusted.

It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant.

"Dear lady, could you bring yourself to play the nominal role of an old man's folly?"

And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves it too, stoops down to kiss it with a sister’s kiss, and throws her silver arms around it clingingly; and we watch it as it flows, ever singing, ever whispering, out to meet its king, the sea—till our voices die away in silence, and the pipes go out—till we, common-place, everyday young men enough, feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do not care or want to speak—till we laugh, and, rising, knock the ashes from our burnt-out pipes, and say “Good-night,” and, lulled by the lapping water and the rustling trees, we fall asleep beneath the great, still stars, and dream that the world is young again—young and sweet as she used to be ere the centuries of fret and care had furrowed her fair face, ere her children’s sins and follies had made old her loving heart—sweet as she was in those bygone days when, a new-made mother, she nursed us, her children, upon her own deep breast—ere the wiles of painted civilization had lured us away from her fond arms, and the poisoned sneers of artificiality had made us ashamed of the simple life we led with her, and the simple, stately home where mankind was born so many thousands years ago.