“Jim, don’t act so foolish. A prisoner’s got to have some kind of a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain’t ever been tried, why, there’s more glory to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life.”
– Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 38. Tom Sawyer to a terrified Jim, after suggesting Jim needs to tame a rattlesnake while imprisoned. But it is not Jim that is foolish. It is Tom who is out of touch with reality from reading too many romantic adventure stories and robbing him of common sense.