Top 100 Clever But Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Catherine was clever, but even a clever woman misses some of the strange corridors in a man.
John Steinbeck
#3. This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!
Friedrich Nietzsche
#4. 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
#5. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. My mind is so clever, but it does me no favors.
Anonymous
#10. There was a period when STP and I weren't making music - we weren't getting along very good at all. But I had my studio, so I was writing and recording a lot of music. But something told me not to put it out. It was all stream of consciousness; it was clever, but it didn't really have substance.
Scott Weiland
#11. That's writing, I suppose - dozens of decisions about what's in, what's out, what goes with what, what's clever but not honest, what's so honest that it's a truism, what's meretricious - and all just to produce one short sketch.
David Mitchell
#12. It's a fine thing to be clever, but too much cleverness usually produces the same result as ignorance.-Lady Berwick
Lisa Kleypas
#13. i know i'm not clever but i'm always right.
J.M. Barrie
#14. She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation.
Jane Austen
#15. Our species may yet end its strange eventful history as just the last, the cleverest of the great apes. The great ape that was clever - but not clever enough. It could escape from most things but not from its own mental confusion.
H.G.Wells
#16. Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. "Well, I never!" said he. "I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all." "I begin to think, Watson," said Holmes, "that I make a mistake in explaining.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#17. Yeah I am stupid, as a wiseman I don't think I am a clever, but as far I see stupid people count themselves as smart and clever.
Deyth Banger
#18. Although individuals may be highly intelligent, they are sometimes dogged by skepticism and doubts. They are clever, but they tend to be hesitant and skeptical and are never really able to settle down. These people are the least receptive.
Dalai Lama
#19. He left behind several failed careers, two failed marriages, and a reputation as a clever but fairly annoying fellow.
Steve Sheinkin
#20. Tiptoeing on a tightrope past insider trading laws may be deft and clever, but it doesn't make it right.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
#21. Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#22. People may say that what I do is very clever, but it's not really at all. It's not Swift.
Rory Bremner
#23. I don't think I see the world in terms of stupid or clever, but in terms of being able to get irony. There's some awful statistic about only 20 per cent of Americans being able to understand irony.
Douglas Coupland
#24. She will not be clever, but still, I see no reason why she should not one day lead a satisfying life separately from her sister. Perhaps she might even marry. All men do not seek intelligence in a wife, and Emmeline is very affectionate.
Diane Setterfield
#25. I wasn't necessarily the brightest in my family. I think my older sister was probably more clever, but I worked very hard.
Wendi Deng Murdoch
#26. Anyone who doesn't respect a teacher or cherish a student may be clever, but has gone astray.
Lao-Tzu
#27. 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. It's the old you-gotta-paint-like-them-before-you-can-paint-like-you thing.
Joss Whedon
#28. There's nothing good about being certain about things. And I don't think there's any real talent in using language in a manipulative way, with phrases like "tax relief" or "Social Security reform." It's politically clever, but it's also completely disingenuous, and it's not something to aspire to.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#29. Lord Birkenhead is very clever but sometimes his brains go to his head.
Margot Asquith
#30. The proper motto is not Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever, but Be good sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can. God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers.
C.S. Lewis
#31. As we passed his table, I saw that the device that imprisoned the book was clever but wicked-looking, as though the critic were holding the work - and it's author - in bondage.
Dean Koontz
#32. People are clever, but almost no one ever devises an optimal quip precisely at the needed moment. Therefore, virtually all great one-liners are later inventions - words that people wished they had spouted, but failed to manufacture at the truly opportune instant.
Stephen Jay Gould
#33. Very clever but dumb at shoothing... dumb as a person but clever at shooting. That's LOGIC!
Deyth Banger
#34. Modeling is not something you excel because you are clever but is based on physical appearance, but then you have to be a businesswoman, like, to keep your longevity.
Gelila Bekele
#35. We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice peg, We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg. We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart, But the devil whoops, as he whooped of old; It's clever, but is it art?
Rudyard Kipling
#36. Seen from a monocultural perspective, manipulating objects is very, very clever. But seen from a multidimensional perspective, from a perspective of diversity, this is extremely crude because what we have lost out on is a cow that serves as a source of sustainable energy.
Vandana Shiva
#37. Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.
Toni Morrison
#38. It is all very well to say that a man is clever, but the reader wants to see examples of it ...
Arthur Conan Doyle
#41. 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
#42. But if you're very clever, I think there's something that can unhinge you if you're not careful.
Julian Barnes
#43. 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
#44. Wish I could say it was a deviously clever move, but the truth is I've got grace management issues.
A&E Kirk
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. Today's religion will be the future's mythology. Both believed at one time by many; but proved wrong by the clever.
Steven Crocker
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. It is not what you gather but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.
Helen Walton
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.
Sun Tzu
#61. I know it sounds calculating, but if you're not cute, you might as well be clever.
David Sedaris
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. Kids are clever and full of fun but, oh, they can be a terrible nuisance!
Alice Provensen
#66. 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
#67. But Louis XIV had clever ministers, mainly men of humble origin chosen for their outstanding ability.
E.H. Gombrich
#68. Though I'm anything but clever, I could talk like that forever.
W.S. Gilbert
#69. What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straghtforward men.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#70. 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
#71. My advice to you concerning applause is this: enjoy it but never quite believe it
Robert Montgomery
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. At 50, a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass
Mark Twain
#79. 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
#80. I'm supposed to quote myself? Seriously? I know I'm a clever wench, but modesty muffles my ego.
K.Z. Snow
#81. 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
#82. A just cause needs no interpreting. It carries its own case. But the unjust argument since it is sick, needs clever medicine.
Euripides
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. I can resist anything but the temptation to make a clever witticism.
Oscar Wilde
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. Words from the past: It's a clever idea, Mr. Bell, but don't wire us, we'll wire you.
Robert Breault
#98. The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
Rudyard Kipling
#99. 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
#100. 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
