Cunning Quotes - Page 15

I was becoming more cunning than an animal in hiding my supply of morphine. A squirrel saving nuts is limited by its undeveloped imagination ... but I was not so handicapped. A squirrel, for example, is debarred from sending money to some greedy doctor or druggist and making arrangements to have a bit of powder sent each day by mail.

Evalyn Walsh McLean

Animal, Doctors, Nuts

Evalyn Walsh McLean, Boyden Sparkes (2000). “Queen of Diamonds: The Fabled Legacy of Evalyn Walsh McLean”, Turner Publishing Company

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All my own experience of life teaches me the contempt of cunning, not the fear. The phrase "profound cunning," has always seemed to me a contradiction in terms. I never knew a cunning mind which was not either shallow, or on some point diseased.

Anna Brownell Jameson

Profound, Mind, Phrases

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I was an addict. That's why, ... I tell you, addiction is a very cunning enemy.

John McCain

Addiction, Enemy, Addict

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Every time. You know why? I want to fail. I work like a dog for twenty years so I'll have the supreme pleasure of failing. Never knew anybody like that, did you? I'm very cunning. I plan it in advance. I fool myself right up to the last minute, and then the time comes and I know how cunningly I've been planning it all the time. I've been a failure all my life.

Wallace Stegner

Dog, Years, Want

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Keep your own secret, and get out other people's. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other people's. Counterwork your rivalswith diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.

Lord Chesterfield

People, Secret, Dexterity

Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.483

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A suspicious person is the rival of him that deceives, both seem to practice a knowledge of cunning device, and equable sense of disengenuous merit.

Norm MacDonald

Practice, Rivals, Merit

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Love is an artful arrangement of artless pretensions, whereby we labor to appear innocent in what we desire to be most cunning.

Norm MacDonald

Love, Desire, Innocent

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Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools.

Norm MacDonald

Men, Duplicity, Desire

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Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on.

William Shakespeare

Beauty, Sweet, White

'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 1, sc. 5, l. [257]

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In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.

Henry David Thoreau

Art, Nature, Men

Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.335

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No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.

Sir George Savile, 8th Baronet

Men, Play, Weakness

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Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?

David Hume

Philosophical, Men, Magic

David Hume (1817). “Philosophical Essays: On Morals, Literature, and Politics”, p.181

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It is important to have a perspective then only through seeing the world is it possible to transcend ideas such as the Flyers, and other aberrant thought forms. With ruthlessness, cunning patience and sweetness, it can be cracked.

Carlos Castaneda

Ideas, Perspective, Important

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I am teaching you to live simply. To live with an idea is a very complicated living, it is cunning. To live simply, just like trees and birds.

Rajneesh

Teaching, Ideas, Bird

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Our spiritual history is the history of God-ventriloquists! The truth is that the voice of God is the voice of cunning Man, the ventriloquist's voice!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Spiritual, Men, Voice

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Fury said to a mousethat he met in the houselet us both go to law; I will prosecute youlet there be no denial; come, we must have a trialfor really, this morning, I've nothing to dosuch a trial, dear sir, said the mouse to the curwithout jury or judge would be wasting our breathI'll be judge, I'll be jurysaid cunning old furyI'll try the whole cause and condemn youto death

Lewis Carroll

Morning, Law, Judging

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Were they, for some purpose almost too cunning for belief, only disguised as themselves?

T. H. White

Purpose, Belief

T. H. White (2011). “The Once and Future King”, p.214, Penguin

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Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.

Kurt Vonnegut

Being Yourself, Unique, Editors

Kurt Vonnegut (2012). “Kurt Vonnegut: Letters”, Random House

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...there is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise - an undivided will.

Soren Kierkegaard

Christian, Temptation, Satan

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And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us.

Plato

Plato, Justice, Lasts

Plato (2015). “The Complete Plato”, p.166, Booklassic

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Black bears rarely attack. But here's the thing. Sometimes they do. All bears are agile, cunning and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn't happen often, but - and here is the absolutely salient point - once would be enough.

Bill Bryson

Strong, Black, Would Be

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In such situations, of course, people don't nurse their anger silently, they moan aloud; but these are not frank, straightforward moans, there is a kind of cunning malice in them, and that's the whole point. Those very moans express the sufferer's delectation; if he did not enjoy his moans, he wouldn't be moaning.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Nurse, People, Kind

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The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do.

Angela Carter

Flesh, Taste, Carnivores

Angela Carter (1997). “Burning your boats: the collected short stories”, Penguin Group USA

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The truth is that the devil is very cunning. The truth is that he is not always as ugly as they say.

Jacques Cazotte

Devil, Ugly, Truth Is

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Henri-Georges Clouzot's cool, clammy, twisty 1955 thriller Diabolique is an almost perfect movie about a very nearly perfect murder, a film in which the artist's methods and the killers' are ideally matched, equal in cunning and in ruthlessness. The screenplay, adapted by Clouzot and three other writers from a novel by the crack French crime-fiction team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, is a fantastically elaborate piece of contrivance, but the scrupulous realism of the direction makes the unnatural tale somehow feel entirely likely.

Terrence Rafferty

Team, Artist, Almost Perfect

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