Quotes About Guile

There is only a single, urgent task: to attach oneself someplace to nature, to that which is strong, striving and bright with unreserved readiness, and then to move forward in one's efforts without any calculation or guile, even when engaged in the most trivial and mundane activities. (Letters on Life)

She grinned, looking for all the world like a sticky-mouthed little girl who had just convinced her gullible mother that she really did drop the first piece of candy into the storm drain and would need another.

And how many mundanes have ever done that? You are without guile, yet keep your own counsel, which is being a most unusual combination! You are having a slight talent of your own. You invite confidences. I say you are the greatest mundane authority on sorcery the world has ever seen!

I always think that the franker you are with people, the more you're likely to deceive 'em; so unused is the modern world to the open hand and the guileless heart

though I always think that the franker you are with people, the more you're likely to deceive 'em; so unused is the modern world to the open hand and the guileless heart, what?

When you look your most innocent is when you are up to something.' Revolving

Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.

You're a poster boy for sincerity. You have all the guile of a lamb.

Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.

Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent, it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile.

She met the pleasurable things of life with frank, open appreciation, and against distasteful conditions she rebelled. Dissimulation was as foreign to her nature as guile to the breast of a babe, and her rebellious outbreaks, by no means rare, had hitherto been quite open and aboveboard.

I have the face of a man who drinks blood, of a woman of guile and deception; of an arrogant beggar who doesn't owe you a thing.

those who make a show or display of innocence are the least innocent of all.

So hopeless is the world without; The world within I doubly prize; Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt, And cold suspicion never rise; Where thou, and I, and Liberty, Have undisputed sovereignty.

The essence of deception is distraction.

These two races hunted each other, lived and died for each other, and, through ignorance or guile, ignored any relationship between each other. The relationship was utterly symbiotic, but completely unacknowledged by either race. In fact, each race pretended that it alone was a Civilized Intelligence, and that the other was bestial, contemptible, and of no account. And it now occured to both of themthat they were, in equal measure, participants in the general concept of Humanity.

And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, millions of mischiefs.

Duplicity (Noun) Deceitfulness in speech or conduct; double-dealing. Synonyms: deceit, deception, fraud, guile, trickery. The state or quality of having two elements or parts; being twofold or double. —Dictionary.com

The lowly squabble over trifles. The great wage secret wars for power and wealth, and they call it government. Wars of words, and tricks, and guile, but no less bloody for that.

The great wage secret wars for power and wealth, and they call it government. Wars of words, and tricks, and guile, but no less bloody for that. The casualties are many.

The lowly squabble over trifles. The great wage secret wars for power and wealth, and they call it government. Wars of words, and tricks, and guile, but no less bloody for that. The casualties are many.

Our world is full of temporary promises and guile. It is necessarily so. We are not evil people, this is just how we survive. There are only a few steps that separate success from failure. Understand this and you will not suffer from disillusionment as often as I did.

He has developed an aesthete's appreciation for the knavishness, the guile, the selfish cleverness of so many of his clients, appreciating human misbehavior for its miserable creativity. In almost every criminal case, there is a moment that combines inspired imagination with sheer audacity in a way that leaves Stern gasping, and full of perverse admiration for conduct he knows he would never have the courage to attempt.

A fox is subtlety itself.