Top 100 But Clever Quotes
#1. But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all.
Robert Harris
#2. Though I'm anything but clever, I could talk like that forever.
W.S. Gilbert
#3. Educate men without religion and you make of them but clever devils.
Arthur Wellesley
#4. I watch his hands, they're lumpy but clever. "Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?"
Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?
Emma Donoghue
#5. Wise men wrote the Constitution, but clever judges have been destroying it, bit by bit, turning it into an instrument of arbitrary judicial power, instead of a limitation on all government power.
Thomas Sowell
#6. Very clever but dumb at shoothing... dumb as a person but clever at shooting. That's LOGIC!
Deyth Banger
#7. [Kay] was not at all an unpleasant person really, but clever, quick, proud, passionate and ambitious. He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but
only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it.
T.H. White
#8. And there I suddenly found my articulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor?
Cary Grant
#9. But if you're very clever, I think there's something that can unhinge you if you're not careful.
Julian Barnes
#10. When, in his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan famously said government is the problem, not the solution, he established the Republican mantra that has not changed in all the years since. It was a clever bit of rhetoric, but it has turned too many Republicans into economic simpletons.
David Horsey
#11. Wish I could say it was a deviously clever move, but the truth is I've got grace management issues.
A&E Kirk
#12. In the end, the thing that really stays with you is not that you were clever enough to connect a sketch to another sketch, but what really sticks with you is when you just have an incredible moment happen, or execute a really funny idea.
Bob Odenkirk
#13. Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?" "Why not?" "Because they are not clever enough for you - gentlemen read better books.
Jane Austen
#14. Obviously people want social calm, but if you do not let clever and ingenious people to participate, obviously there must be some dormant volcano that will erupt, sooner or later.
Lech Walesa
#15. Some thought he was quite wicked, but in truth, he was no more or less than any other crow: enamored of bright new things, and too clever to get them by the usual path.
Catherynne M Valente
#16. Humans are not the fastest or the strongest animals on the planet, but when it comes to survival, we have had the unique advantage of being clever.
David Perlmutter
#17. Today's religion will be the future's mythology. Both believed at one time by many; but proved wrong by the clever.
Steven Crocker
#18. I don't think we are going to become extinct. We're very clever and extremely resourceful - and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I'm sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question.
David Attenborough
#19. I went up to Prince and said 'I'm a big fan of your stuff' and he looked at me and just walked off ... left me standing there like a ****. He's a prat, but a clever prat.
Elton John
#20. When you reach the top, don't forget about the cats who fought alongside you on the way there. Maybe they weren't as strong, as clever, or as brave as you, but they still gave everything for what they believed in.
Erin Hunter
#21. But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.
Jane Austen
#22. My dear, it couldn't have lasted for ever ... But you're a good man. And very clever ... . You will get through ... .
Ford Madox Ford
#23. It is not what you gather but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.
Helen Walton
#24. I understand that Republicans-running-against-Obamacare-in-order-to-save-Medicare is a clever jujitsu. But how long will they play out that argument before they get back to the economy?
Jennifer Granholm
#25. Being clever is not just about how much you know, but about knowing that you really don't know very much at all.
John Connolly
#26. It's easy to poke fun at the world and think yourself clever, but it's much harder to stand silent and endure.
Jessica Cluess
#27. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.
Sun Tzu
#28. I know it sounds calculating, but if you're not cute, you might as well be clever.
David Sedaris
#29. The artist will have had his revenge for being made to wait,
A revenge not only necessary but right and clever
Simply to leave him out of the scene forever.
Donald Justice
#30. Nothing, my dear and clever colleague, is not your run-of-the-mill nothing, the result of idleness and inactivity, but dynamic, aggressive Nothingness, that is to say, perfect, unique, ubiquitous, in other words Nonexistence, ultimate and supreme.
Stanislaw Lem
#31. But sooner or later people have to take up their own lives, not disperse them out as though they were knitting wool that a clever knitter might handle better.
Elizabeth Harrower
#32. Catherine was clever, but even a clever woman misses some of the strange corridors in a man.
John Steinbeck
#33. Kids are clever and full of fun but, oh, they can be a terrible nuisance!
Alice Provensen
#34. They're not going to arrest you,' Skulduggery said as they walked through the door. 'They might glare at you and say angry words, but they won't arrest you. Well, they might arrest you. There's a good chance they will. But the important thing is that I've done nothing wrong.'
'For once.
Derek Landy
#35. But Louis XIV had clever ministers, mainly men of humble origin chosen for their outstanding ability.
E.H. Gombrich
#36. This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!
Friedrich Nietzsche
#37. I don't have much in the way of money or worldly possessions, I'm not beautiful, intelligent or clever, but I'm happy, and I intend to stay that way! I was born happy, I love people, I have a trusting nature, and I'd like everyone else to be happy too.
Anne Frank
#38. What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straghtforward men.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#39. Occasionally I am smitten with an acute case of Smug. It can happen to anyone, but it happens most often to people who think they've been especially clever.
Kevin Hearne
#40. My advice to you concerning applause is this: enjoy it but never quite believe it
Robert Montgomery
#42. At least if I
was picking guys up in fits of drunken idiocy, they were not only handsome, but also even mildly clever.
C.E. Murphy
#43. Drake, I'd like to collaborate with. He's a phenomenal lyricist. Probably the best rapper in the world at the moment. I love Kanye but there's something about Drake; he's more straight up, really clever and really poetic and metaphorical - I love that. He's just clever.
Ellie Goulding
#44. This isn't a nice story, and this isn't an easy story. But it is a story about fairies, so feel free to think of it as a fairy story. It's not like you'd believe it anyway.
Jo Walton
#45. You know, it isn't that were particularly good at granting wishes, or finding things or, well, anything. Playing tricks, maybe. but we pay attention. We find the loose thread that everyone else misses and tug. It makes us look so very clever.
Carrie Vaughn
#46. I like clever songs. I like songs that make people think and I try to have substance in all my records, even with 'Sweet Dreams' how it was a club record and it was up tempo, but it was melodic and it was, like, lyrical.
Rico Love
#47. At 50, a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass
Mark Twain
#48. I have great affection for you, Roy" I answered, "but I don't think you are the sort of person I'd care to have breakfast with.
W. Somerset Maugham
#49. I'm supposed to quote myself? Seriously? I know I'm a clever wench, but modesty muffles my ego.
K.Z. Snow
#50. You don't have to dumb down - you just have to find a clever, good, secure man. I've found a couple - I've been lucky - but it's probably hard for everybody to find that true love of a good man.
Kimora Lee Simmons
#51. A just cause needs no interpreting. It carries its own case. But the unjust argument since it is sick, needs clever medicine.
Euripides
#52. What's magic, eh? Just wavin' a stick an' sayin' a few wee magical words. An' what's so clever aboot that, eh? But lookin' at things, really lookin' at 'em, and then workin' 'em oout, now, that's a real skill.
Terry Pratchett
#53. Josh Billings said, It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems.
John W. Gardner
#54. Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#55. Off, end this lies it's not awesome. Please take this crap, second very clever and smart, but I want to add suffix (-ass), it's very suitable, isn't it?
Deyth Banger
#56. Charlie looked at the great library of scrolls. It would take a lifetime to read them all, even for a genius. So this was how they'd trapped the great Cipher, thought Charlie. She was clever enough to escape any prison. But something in her nature couldn't let the scrolls go unread. Lily's
C.S. Quinn
#57. Nate liked money. It was a sleek and clever invention, beautiful in the way it lubricated power and focused people's attention. But it had a clumsy, brutal side, too. Money bludgeoned people without it into silence, shut them away in neighborhoods like this.
Scott Westerfeld
#58. I have abused language. I love it, and I abuse it ... I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register.
Joss Whedon
#59. You may be a well-educated, clever and virtuous person, but those qualities will not necessarily make you a successful businessman. You must give your best to each and every task you take on, and reflect on your performance with an honest and unprejudiced eye.
Konosuke Matsushita
#60. They ate my humanity but no humanity in beginning humans Earth dust atoms
Clever microorganisms defy gods
But defy nothing
Phantom of truth
Beneath reality's facade
A.R. LaBaere
#61. I love you. I wish there were different words that I could say, but no one's been clever enough to invent any yet. So it's all I've got. But it's everything. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Please come home soon.
J. Sterling
#62. A clever general, therefore, avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return.
Sun Tzu
#63. When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.
A.A. Milne
#64. I can resist anything but the temptation to make a clever witticism.
Oscar Wilde
#65. You can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.
Tom Stoppard
#67. I've written a lot of wordy, erudite, pretentious songs, but believe it or not, I'm usually doing my damnedest to resist the temptation to be overly "clever," and trying to keep things as accessible - and singable - as possible.
Peter Blegvad
#68. Words from the past: It's a clever idea, Mr. Bell, but don't wire us, we'll wire you.
Robert Breault
#69. The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
Rudyard Kipling
#70. Girls get their boobs and forget they were ever so gutsy and smart. Boys, too, can display their own brand of clever and funny behavior, but let them get that first erection and they go complete moron for the next sixty years. For both genders, adolescence occurs as a kind of Ice Age of Dumbness.
Chuck Palahniuk
#71. The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.
Graham Swift
#72. You scare me, Sebastian. You're so good looking, and so clever, and so damn charming. Hell, you're even sporting a monster dick - not that I go for that sort of thing, but a lot of women do. Sebastian, if someone had to design a death trap for stupid women, you'd be it.
Remittance Girl
#73. The child had wanted attention. She had just asked to be noticed. But she was given an assessment. 'What a clever girl!
Peter Hoeg
#75. But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
Catherynne M Valente
#77. His heart filled his chest and ran to the end of his tail and the very tips of his considerable ears. It filled his head, squeezing out his brain. But Henri, the foundling, was a humanist, and while not particularly clever was the smartest creature Gamache knew. Everything he knew he knew by heart.
Louise Penny
#78. Medium clever," Simon acknowledged. "Like a cross between George Clooney in Ocean's Eleven and those MythBusters guys, but, you know, better-looking."
"I'm always so glad I have no idea what you're vacantly chattering about," said Jace. "It fills me with a sense of peace and well-being.
Cassandra Clare
#79. In England it is bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently. It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion.
George Mikes
#80. You know... no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you're not. But if you're clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were.
Charlie Jane Anders
#81. Elton John himself never seems pretentious but Bernie Taupin's lyrics often do - sometimes pretentious in a clever sort of way, but pretentious nonetheless. There is a conflict between Elton's and Bernie's personal styles, no doubt about it.
Jon Landau
#82. But I don't sit down at dinner and have clever ideas.
Mark Rylance
#83. I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home, but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.
Tony Campolo
#84. Sneaking out at night. You think you're so clever, but you're not. Either you're a saboteur, Johannes, or you've got a mistress.
The Reverend's wife, Grete
The Informer
Steen Langstrup
#85. The women hailed in the bible as examples for us were exceedingly wise, clever, intelligent, capable, and quick-witted. They were not shackled to the home, brainless ans without ambition. But their ambitions were God-oriented and God-directed.
~ Jennie
Anna Sofia Botkin
#86. He things we think he's a double agent, working for them but secretly working for us. He doesn't know we know he's a triple agent, working for them but secretly working for us but really he's secretly working for them. Dexter, how's your brain?"
"Hurting.
Derek Landy
#87. The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity.
Thomas Carlyle
#88. No entrepreneur ever wrote a memoir that said, 'Then I did something terribly risky and not all that clever, but once again fortune chose to reward my stupidity.
Tim Dowling
#89. A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.
Anthony Trollope
#90. No, I'm not smart," he whispered against her ear, "but I was wise enough to fall in love with you and clever enough to convince you to marry me. I hope I'm not so stupid that I would ever let you go.
Sara Lindsey
#91. Compared with my brother, I always felt like Richard III, some clever humpbacked thing who surpassed him in the end. He was the one who read books, but I became the writer. He painted and drew, but I was the one who got accepted by the High School of Music and Art.
Jerome Charyn
#92. I am trying to write novels for properly clever people, but I also want them to be proper novels that also stick in a person's mind and have an atmosphere about them.
Sophie Hannah
#93. My mind is so clever, but it does me no favors.
Anonymous
#94. But you didn't die."
"Clever lad, to deduce that from such slender evidence after living with me for just three years.
Scott Lynch
#95. Getting a Lady is easy, but keeping a Lady is clever.
Pontius Joseph
#96. A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.
Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
#97. Clever man is a chicken; it can fly, but a little. Genius, on the other hand, is a migratory bird; it can fly at high altitudes until He disappears on the horizon!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#98. As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or 'scholarship candidates,' but 'Fellows of another college.
G.H. Hardy
#99. there were three bad mistakes you could make, but if you made only two of the three you could be forgiven. The mistakes were: to be foreign; to be clever; and to be bad at games.
Salman Rushdie
#100. My idea of the perfect man would be someone intelligent and clever enough, but also kind and compassionate enough to stand up to me - to stand up to me with compassion.
Madonna Ciccone
