Cunning Quotes - Page 17

• Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.

  Jules Verne

  Two, America, Enemy

  Jules Verne, Jules VERNE (2016). “From The Earth To The Moon / De la terre à la lune (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)”, p.79, Jules Verne

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• I don't dabble in politics too much. I'm really ignorant to the world of politics. I'm not that smart, I'm not that cunning, it's just too much smoke and mirrors for me. I just don't want to play that game.

  Michael K. Williams

  Smart, Play, Mirrors

  "Talking With Our Mouths Full: Michael Kenneth Williams". Interview with Mark Anthony Green, www.gq.com. October 4, 2011.

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• He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him.

  Charles Dickens

  Character, Eye, Wrinkles

  Charles Dickens (1854). “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby ... With a Frontispiece from a Painting by T. Webster”, p.5

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• "As I think I told you once before," said I, "it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death."

  Charles Dickens

  Thinking, Greed, Words Of Wisdom

  Charles Dickens (1850). “The Personal History of David Copperfield”, p.538

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• Do not be held a cheat, even though it is impossible to
  live today without being one. Let your greatest cunning lie in covering up what
  looks like cunning.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Lying, Live For Today, Covering

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• By Cunning & Craft is a masterpiece of writing about writing. If, like Scheherazade, you had to spin out a story under threat of death, this is the how-to book to read. It's filled with thoughtful, nuanced advice from a teacher/writer who actually writes, and writes beautifully and with great humor. The list of rejected stories is worth the price of the whole book.

  Nora Gallagher

  Teacher, Book, Writing

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• Figures cannot calculate the amount collected by those public and private robbers: it is more than would liberate every slave in the United States; it would pay the British debt! They say, We do not force people to give. I see no difference between forcing a man out of his money, at the mouth of a pistol, and forcing it from by trick and cunning; the crime is the same.

  Anne Royall

  Men, Differences, People

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• The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Children, Simple, Law

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• It recognizes no morality but a sham morality meant for deceit, no honor even among thieves and of a thievish sort, no force but physical force, no intellectual power but cunning, no disgrace but failure, no crime but stupidity.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Stupidity, Intellectual, Honor

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1968). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• Cunning is neither the consequence of sense, nor does it give sense. A proof that it is not sense, is that cunning people never imagine that others can see through them. It is the consequence of weakness.

  Horace Walpole

  People, Giving, Weakness

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• Humbly to ask a favour of people who are on the point of knocking your brains out sometimes produces good results.

  Samuel Beckett

  People, Brain, Favour

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.167, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• It is a remarkable circumstance in reference to cunning persons that they are often deficient not only in comprehensive, far-sighted wisdom, but even in prudent, cautious circumspection.

  Richard Whately

  Prudent, Circumstances, Remarkable

  Francis Bacon, Richard Whately (1858). “The Essays ... Revised ... by Thomas Markby ... Second edition”, p.238

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• A cunning woman is a knavish fool.

  George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton

  Women, Fool

  "Advice to a Lady". Poem by George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, 1731.

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• Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Clothes, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.184, Library of America

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• Undoubtedly ... there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. What bears affinity to cunning is despicable.

  Jane Austen

  Art, Bears, Sometimes

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• There are a great many simpletons who know themselves to be so, and who make a very cunning use of their own simplicity.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Stupidity, Simplicity, Use

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• One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Men, World, May

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• Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

  Richard Adams

  People, Tricks, Destroyed

  Richard Adams (2014). “Watership Down”, p.36, Oneworld Publications

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• Prayer is not the cunning art of using God, subjecting Him to one's selfish ends in an effort to get out of Him what you want.

  F. Huegel

  Art, Prayer, Selfish

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• Have you ever noticed how many men in the Bible failed in the second half of life? Our enemy is so cunning that he will wait forty or even fifty years to set a trap.

  Joseph C. Aldrich

  Men, Years, Waiting

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• The paparazzi were outside the theatre every single night, but we came up with a cunning ruse. I would wear the same outfit every time - a different T-shirt underneath, but I'd wear the same jacket and zip it up so they couldn't see what I was wearing underneath, and the same hat. So they could take pictures for six months, but it would look like the same day, so they became unpublishable. Which was hilarious, because there's nothing better than seeing paparazzi getting really frustrated.

  Daniel Radcliffe

  Night, Frustrated, Theatre

  "Radcliffe Enjoyed Irritating Paparazzi" by wenn.com, July 11, 2007.

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