Cunning Quotes - Page 3

• Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.

  Ovid

  Lying, Differences, Knavery

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• Envy, like the worm, never runs but to the fairest fruit; like a cunning bloodhound, it singles out the fattest deer in the flock.

  Francis Beaumont

  Running, Envy, Fruit

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• The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

  George W. Bush

  Fighting, Greatest Fear, March

  2004 Republican National Convention Address, delivered 2 September 2004, Madison Square Garden, New York

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• I love my country, By which I mean, I am indebted joyfully, To all the people throughout its history, Who have fought the government to make right, Where so many cunning sons and daughters, Our foremothers and forefathers, Came singing through slaughter, Came through hell and high water, So that we could stand here, And behold breathlessly the sight, How a raging river of tears, Cut a grand canyon of light... Why can't all decent men and women, Call themselves feminists? Out of respect, For those who fought for this...

  Ani DiFranco

  Country, Daughter, Mean

  "Song: Grand Canyon (Educated Guess)". January 20, 2004.

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• And by a prudent flight and cunning save
  A life which valour could not, from the grave.
  A better buckler I can soon regain,
  But who can get another life again?

  Archilochus

  Life, Prudent, Flight

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• If beauty isn't genius it usually signals at least a high level of animal cunning.

  Peter York

  Beauty, Animal, Genius

  Peter York (1980). “Style wars”, Sidgwick & Jackson

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• The fact is that America's weapons systems have made it impossible for anybody to confront it militarily. So, all you have is your wits and your cunning, and your ability to fight in the way the Iraqis are fighting.

  Arundhati Roy

  Fighting, America, Weapons

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• I am a mediocre being, a bit cunning.

  Renee Vivien

  Mediocre, Bits

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• Do not let the Obama administration fool you with all their cunning Alinsky methods. And if you don't know what that method is, I implore you to get the book 'Rules for Radicals,' by Saul Alinsky. Mr. Obama is very well trained in these methods.

  Jon Voight

  Book, Fool, Administration

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• Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.

  Mikhail Lermontov

  People, Glory, Achieve

  "A Hero of Our Time". Book by Mikhail Lermontov, 1841.

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• Malice, in its false witness, promotes its tale with so cunning a confusion, so mingles truths with falsehoods, surmises with certainties, causes of no moment with matters capital, that the accused can absolutely neither grant nor deny, plead innocen.

  Philip Sidney

  Confusion, Matter, Causes

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”

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• I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.

  James Joyce

  Life, Art, Believe

  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ch. 5 (1916)

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• The very cunning conceal their cunning; the indifferently shrewd boast of it.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Boast

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• What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.

  Georges Bernanos

  Teenage, Knowing, Bird

  Georges Bernanos, Rémy Rougeau (2002). “The Diary of a Country Priest”, p.123, Da Capo Press

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• The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning he blunders and betrays.

  Thomas Paine

  Animal, Men, Use

  Thomas Paine (1819). “The Political Works of Thomas Paine: In Two Volumes”

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• Of course I'm trying to trick you! That's the way of the world, Baudelaires. Everyone runs around with their secrets and their schemes, trying to outwit everyone else.

  Daniel Handler

  Running, Secret, Trying

  "The End". Book by Daniel Handler, 2006.

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• The fox is very cunning, but he is more cunning who catches the fox.

  Pedro Calderon de la Barca

  Foxes

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• In the face of brutality I was prudent. Before injustice I held my peace. I sacrificed the things in hand for the good of the hypothetical whole. I believed in the tongue instead of the fist. As an armor against oppression I taught patience and faith in the human soul. I know now how wrong I was. I have been a traitor to myself and to my people. All that is rot.

  Carson McCullers

  Fighting, Hands, People

  "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter".

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• The most effectual way to be deceived is to believe oneself more cunning than one's neighbors.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Believe, Vanity, Deception

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• The more clever and cunning people are, the stranger the events will be.

  Laozi

  Clever, Knowledge, People

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• The cunning tempter, by avoiding the grossness of vice, often silences objections.

  Antoine Rivarol

  Silence, Vices, Avoiding

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• Stratagem is the right hand of cunning.

  George William Curtis

  Hands, Stratagem

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• Be not caught by the cunning of those who appear in a disguise.

  Horace

  Caught, Disguise

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• Silence, exile, cunning and so on... it's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work.

  Don DeLillo

  Ideas, Silence, Literature

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.4, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

  Alexander Pope

  Wise, Honesty, Women

  Alexander Pope, Alexander Chalmers (1807). “A Supplementary Volume to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: Containing Pieces of Poetry, Not Inserted in Warburton's and Warton's Editions : and a Collection of Letters, Now First Published”, p.124

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