Top 100 Quotes About Cunning
#1. Don't worry. We who are born poor have to use cunning to get what we want. Scruples are for the privileged. She
Ken Follett
#2. But he was one of those weak creatures, void of pride, timorous, anemic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves.
H.G.Wells
#3. As equally as one may use size, the cunning James Crosbie was once classified as the most dangerous man in Scotland, notorious for his daring bank robberies and escaping on a bicycle. He was the criminal mastermind behind many successful crimes carried out throughout the UK.
Stephen Richards
#4. The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better.".
Friedrich Nietzsche
#5. 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
#6. Merridew might not have been the slenderest of men or the tallest. But he had grip, he had cunning and like many fat men he had unexpected resources of indignation which he was able to turn on like a flood when they were needed.
John Le Carre
#7. It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one's own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one's own faults as a cunning gambler conceals his dice.5
Jonathan Haidt
#8. They treat me like a fox, a cunning fellow ( Schlaukopf ) of the first rank. But the truth is that with a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to do with a pirate, I try to be a pirate and a half.
Otto Von Bismarck
#9. Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report: this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.
William Shakespeare
#10. But even in the wealth of spring, he remembered the harshness of this country. It is a cunning place, he thought, a place of dangers, after all.
John Ehle
#11. One must be cunning and wicked in this world.
Leo Tolstoy
#12. Caliban: As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island.
William Shakespeare
#13. Wine is a cunning wrestler.
Plautus
#14. For the first time she could see a man's head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through the tunnel of his mouth.
Zora Neale Hurston
#16. All his life Tyrion had prided himself on his cunning, the only gift the gods had seen fit to give him, and yet this seven-times-damned she-wolf Catelyn Stark had outwitted him at every turn. The
George R R Martin
#17. It's the word 'artful'; it's such a great word, with its dark and its light side, its art and its cunning, the craft and the crafty of it - I've been preoccupied with the word 'artful' and the twin notions of 'cornucopia' and 'pickpocket' it suggests for quite some time.
Ali Smith
#18. A true generous heart can never revolve majorly with monetary skills nor business acumen nor cunning mind.
Angelica Hopes
#19. On Andrew Jackson: His native strength compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach; and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him a sharper tool.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#20. Real pirates were better than in movies, more daring and terrifying and cunning than any screenwriter could imagine. They operated during the Golden Age of Piracy, from 1650 to 1720.
Robert Kurson
#21. The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest.
Anthony Trollope
#22. In the ancient tales, to which each Viking aspired, strenght was the only virtue, iron the only currency that mattered. Loki with his cunning, whereby a weaker man might outdo a stronger one, was an anathema to these folk.
Mark Lawrence
#23. She was braver than I, she always had been. I cared too much for the opinion of others, she cared not a whit. I was cautious, she was brash. I was a thinker, she was a doer. I kindled fires, she spread them. And right then and ever after, I saw how cunning
Sue Monk Kidd
#24. These people being of a sharp and acute intellect, and gifted with a rich and powerful understanding, excel in whatever studies they pursue, and are more quick and cunning than the other inhabitants of a western clime.
Giraldus Cambrensis
#25. There was something obscene about a billionaire's being optimistic and aggressive and cunning.
Kurt Vonnegut
#27. I rolled my eyes. He made me sound like a cunning criminal about to bring down the entire covenant.
Jenny Trout
#28. The easiest way to be cheated is to believe yourself to be more cunning than others.
Pierre Charron
#29. 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
#30. I was an addict. That's why, ... I tell you, addiction is a very cunning enemy.
John McCain
#31. Picture this," said Magnus. "Me with a little monkey friend. I could teach him tricks. I could dress him in a cunning jacket. He could look just like me! But more monkey-shaped.
Cassandra Clare
#33. Gold is for the mistress -- silver for the maid --
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade."
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
"But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all.
Rudyard Kipling
#34. As Friedland had done and as Jobs would learn to do, he was able to turn charm into a cunning force, to cajole and intimidate and distort reality with the power of his personality
Walter Isaacson
#35. Very often it happens that prayer is on the lips, but in the heart cunning, incredulity or unbelief, so that by the lips the man seems near to God, whilst in his heart he is far from Him.
John Of Kronstadt
#36. Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Plato
#37. Cancer is such a ruthless adversary because it behaves as if it has its own fiendishly cunning agenda.
Paul Davies
#38. It is not true that fate slips silently into our lives. It steps in through the door that we have opened, and we invite it to enter. No one is strong enough or cunning enough to avert by word or deed the misfortune that is rooted in the iron laws of his character and his life.
Sandor Marai
#39. Devil, you are fired
You could never ever have been required
For all the fiascos you inspire
I pour on you the Lord's unquenchable fire
Now get thee behind me, devil
You scheming sneaky crafty cunning conniving embodiment of evil
Pedro Okoro
#40. To make women learned and foxes tame has the same effect - to make them more cunning.
King James I
#41. Till swollen with cunning, of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And, melting, Heavens conspir'd his overthrow.
Christopher Marlowe
#42. In my experience heroes are no more good than you or I. And though occasionally noble, they are just as often cunning, resourceful, and a little brash.
Jonathan Auxier
#43. In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.
Lord Chesterfield
#45. If you've got no responsibility and don't have to generate a certain amount of cash each month, and can live on a shoestring, and are ambitious enough, then you might have a chance. You can be dedicated but that is no guarantee that you'll make it. I rely on a hunch, a little luck, and some cunning.
Elliott Erwitt
#46. Because of his very great love, he could not steal from this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape detection.
Jack London
#48. Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.
Francis Bacon
#50. 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
#51. So it is not one whit mysterious that we poison the water and air and topsoil, and construct ever more cunning doomsday devices, both industrial and military. Let us be perfectly frank for a change. For practically everybody, the end of the world can't come soon enough.
Kurt Vonnegut
#52. No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been brought up to deceive and be cunning, to protect themselves from our society. I don't want to be like that.
Carlos Fuentes
#53. Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.
Frederic Bastiat
#54. Clever people, people who are cunning, do not know what love is because their minds are so sharp, because they are so clever, because they are so superficial - which means to be on the surface, and love is not a thing that exists on the surface.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#55. It's lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We'd all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.
Michael Connelly
#57. Most love, I've observed, is narcissism at its finest and most cunning. Love is always about how you feel but not necessarily how the other person feels. The notion that simply because you love someone they should be willing to love you in return.
Kat Savage
#58. If you want to compete in Italy, the only accepted ways are brute force, or cunning. Like Machiavelli says, "Fronte otra forze." And neither of these two "virtues" is suited to an artist. The artist has to stay intelligent.
Francesco Clemente
#59. 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
#60. That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.
Samuel Johnson
#61. Ah! what is human life? How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade, Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd! The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth; Too subtle is the movement to be seen; Yet soon the hour is up
and we are gone.
Edward Young
#62. The lion's blessing is in his strength; the monkey's blessing is in his cunning; and the elephant's blessing is in his might.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#63. Princes, kings, and other rulers of the world have used all their strength and cunning against the Church, yet it continues to endure and hold its own.
John Foxe
#64. Denied the outlet, through play, of his energies, he recoiled upon himself and developed his mental processes. He became cunning; he had idle time in which to devote himself to thoughts of trickery.
Jack London
#65. New York City is where specks of dust aspire randomly with all their cunning to become grains of sand.
David B. Lentz
#66. Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.
Carol Shields
#68. As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant,
A sorcerer, that by his cunning hath
Cheated me of the island,
----Caliban
(Act III, scene II, lines 40-43)
William Shakespeare
#69. The cunning tempter, by avoiding the grossness of vice, often silences objections.
Antoine Rivarol
#70. Writing about why you write is a funny business, like scratching what doesn't itch. Impulses are mysterious, and explaining them must be done with mirrors, like certain cunning slight-of-hand routines.
Patricia Hampl
#71. The only means to gain one's ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say; but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment. JOHANN VON GOETHE, 1749-1832
Robert Greene
#72. An electric chain seems to vibrate, as it were, between our brain and him or her preserved there [in a Daguerreotype] so well by the limner's cunning. Time, space, both are annihilated, and we identify the semblance with the reality.
Walt Whitman
#73. Interest yourself in public affairs as a duty of citizenship, but do not surrender your faith to those who discredit and debase politics by scoffing at sentiment and principle, and whose political activity consists in attempts to gain popular support by cunning devices and shrewd manipulation.
Grover Cleveland
#74. Cyndara is extremely cunning. I wouldn't put anything past her or Lady Aron.
Diana S. Zimmerman
#75. I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ (2 Cor. 11:3). Sin is the move away from simple devotion to Christ. Sin is spiritual complexity.
Tony Reinke
#76. The function of law and theology are the same: to keep the poor from taking back by violence what the rich have stolen by cunning.
Robert Anton Wilson
#77. The whole construct of my universe was a cunning, entangled network of lies. I had to start over again. I knew that. And I had to begin by ceasing to loathe myself for my difference from the rest.
Pat Conroy
#78. A common observation, that few are mended by imprisonment, and that he, whose crimes have made confinement necessary, seldom makes any other use of his enlargement, than to do, with greater cunning, what he did before with less.
Samuel Johnson
#79. Drop the mind and the divine. God is not an object, it is a merger. The mind resists a merger, the mind is against surrender; the mind is very cunning and calculating.
Rajneesh
#80. If beauty isn't genius it usually signals at least a high level of animal cunning.
Peter York
#81. Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.
Amos Oz
#82. Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.
Alexander Pope
#83. A player who dives and wins a penalty in Portugal, or Spain or Italy is considered clever, experienced, cunning, someone who understands the game. In England a player who wins a penalty like that is a cheat.
Jose Mourinho
#84. To be without guile is to be free of deceit, cunning, hypocrisy, and dishonesty in thought or action.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
#85. The guardians with their stern faces had no creative power. But they had strength and cunning, and they had found a way to steal and harness other people's powers for their own needs. They were forcing the children to describe the future they wanted, not the one that could be.
Lois Lowry
#86. Thick cunning played on her face, had no fun there and went somewhere else.
Raymond Chandler
#87. Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.
George Ayittey
#88. Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#89. In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty.
Leo Tolstoy
#90. a strong arm kills but a cunning mind keeps you alive
Giles Kristian
#91. Compare subliminal advertising to something just as cunning. If you want people to lose weight, one effective strategy is to put mirrors in the cafeteria.
Richard H. Thaler
#92. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck alone to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The
Rudyard Kipling
#93. Nissa Montaine was not cunning, but she was studious. She'd been known to read the same book over again dozens of times and comb the nuances from it.
Sarah E. Morin
#94. Search then the ruling passion; there alone, The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.
Alexander Pope
#95. I've watched you barely escape death several times, and each instance killed me a little inside. They may be dormant now, but we have enemies both cunning and cruel. Knowing you possess the power to defeat most of them doesn't threaten me, luv. It relieves me to my very core.
Jeaniene Frost
#96. Your cunning has proved to be that of Cain. I grant you power over the Hellmouth. May Samael take my revenge. The thing said with a bitter look and a voice that seemed to be many.
Georgina Morales
#97. For Rousseau and Mandeville the absence of a moral instinct meant the laws of society had no moral validity, they were nothing but the inventions of the cunning and the powerful, in order to maintain or to acquire an unnatural and unjust superiority over the rest of their fellow creatures.
Gertrude Himmelfarb
#98. There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.
Pat Conroy
#99. Amongst such as out of cunning hear all and talk little, be sure to talk less; or if you must talk, say little.
Jean De La Bruyere
#100. Cats aren't as friendly as they appear: fur, teeth, instinct, selfishness and cunning. Essentially they're just big rats.
Richard House
