Cunning Quotes - Page 2

• With care, and skill, and cunning art, She parried Time's malicious dart, And kept the years at bay, Till passion entered in her heart and aged her in a day!

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Time, Art, Passion

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “The Destroyer”

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• I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.

  Jean Genet

  Thieves, Traitor, Ruthless

  Jean Genet (1965). “The thief's journal”

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• None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.

  Lydia M. Child

  Jesus, Bravery, Political

  "Letters from New York". Book by Lydia Maria Child, Letter No. 34, 1843.

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• Cunning is strength withheld.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strength

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• Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon; cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.

  Joseph Addison

  Selfish, Distance, Eye

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.226

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• It is a matter of common knowledge that the government of South Carolina is under domination of a small ring of cunning, conniving men.

  Strom Thurmond

  Men, Matter, South Carolina

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• Watchfulness is the only guard against cunning. Be intent on his intentions. Many succeed in making others do their own affairs, and unless you possess the key to their motives you may at any moment be forced to take their chestnuts out of the fire to the damage of your own fingers.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Fire, Keys, May

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• If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.

  William Blake

  Would Be, Lions, Foxes

  William Blake (2000). “The Selected Poems of William Blake”, p.199, Wordsworth Editions

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• Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from open day.

  Samuel Johnson

  Twilight

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.420

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• The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better.".

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Desire, Doe

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

  William Hazlitt

  Silly, Men, Two

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• The whole power of cunning is privative; to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Integrity, Character

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• The seeming truth which cunning times put on to entrap the wisest.

  William Shakespeare

  Seeming, Wisest

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 3, sc. 2, l. 97

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• Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Mother, Men, Weakness

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Janet Todd (1989). “The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft”, NYU Press

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• Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Jesus, Disciple, Ought

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.

  Cesare Pavese

  Secret, Normal, Defense

  Cesare Pavese, Alma Elizabeth Murch (1961). “This Business of Living”, p.117, Transaction Publishers

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• Cold & cunning come from the north: But cunning sans wisdom is nothing worth.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Cold

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac”, p.15, Nayika Publishing

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• My opportunities were still there, nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail, and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Strength, Opportunity, Needs

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• The bounds of a man's knowledge are easily concealed, if he has but prudence.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Men, Prudence, Concealed

  Oliver Goldsmith, David Masson (1869). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith”, p.250

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• I believe that cunning is not only morally wrong but also politically expedient, and have therefore always discountenanced its use even from the practical standpoint.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Believe, Struggle, Use

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Glorious Thoughts of Gandhi: Being a Treasury of about Ten Thousand Valuable and Inspiring Thougths of Mahatma Gandhi, Classified Under Four Hundred Subjects”

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• The English are good at bad guys - the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it.

  Idris Elba

  Guy, Style, Burning

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• Progress never defines its ultimate objective but thrusts its victims at once into an infinite series,' Mr. [John Crowe] Ransom said' 'Industrialism,' he declared, 'is rightfully a menial, of almost miraculous cunning, but no intelligence; it needs to be strongly governed, or it will destroy the economy of the household. Only a community of tough conservative habit can master it.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Community, Progress, Needs

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• In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Dark, Sanctuary, Able

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.380, Oxford Paperbacks

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• In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.

  Cynthia Ozick

  Women, Communication, Yelling

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• Through ignorance, through faith, through intelligence, through trickery and cunning, through illumination, the reader rewrites the text with the same words of the original but under another heading, re-creating it, as it were, in the very act of bringing it into being.

  Alberto Manguel

  Ignorance, Creating, Illumination

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

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