Quotes About Scheming

She stared at me and I could tell what she was thinking: You are a gameplayer. You are a sociopath. You are a killer.

and called you cousin while reaching around to put the knife between your shoulder blades. This contest was supposed to be so high and mighty — a chance to shape the future. But the nitty-gritty was more like a reality TV show called Who Wants to Be a Backstabber? It was getting more cutthroat by the hour. Were all Cahills so

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.

A man who has schemed for some time can no longer do without it; all other ways of living are to him dull and insipid.

Accidents did not just happen. From time to time they were carefully plotted, calculated, and arranged to one's advantage-all, of course, under the cloak of happenstance.

gossiping, backbiting courtiers, and as he closed the mahogany door behind him and the heavy brass latch clacked into place, the room erupted into a dozen scheming conversations. Power was like a magnet, keeping everything rigid and straight and proper. But without the magnet, it all collapsed into disorganized scrap.

In scenes like these, any man could be Iago.

It's the speech people engage in when they attempt to influence and manipulate others. It's what university students do when they write an essay to please the professor, instead of articulating and clarifying their own ideas. It's what everyone does when they want something, and decide to falsify themselves to please and flatter. It's scheming and sloganeering and propaganda.

One of our housekeepers called him Eddie Haskell. We'd never seen that old TV show Leave It to Beaver, but years later when I saw a couple of reruns on late-night TV, I realized that our housekeeper really hadn't liked Roger. Eddie Haskell was an unctuous, conniving brown-noser. He was the two-faced character who'd politely compliment Mrs. Cleaver on her lovely dress while instigating some evil prank that would inevitably get her son, the Beaver, in trouble.

Hasn't it always been like this?' asked Charlotte. 'Haven't they always been games that empires play with one another?' 'Maybe,' answered Lord Ingram. 'But it can take a queen-and-country sort like me a while to work that out.

Alaric grunted. "Someone should tell her that. I'm telling you, Ewan, she said nothing. She stared at me like I was some kind of toad. Worse, she had Crispen acting like I was the enemy. The two whispered like 104/756 conspirators and glared at me when I dared intervene.

Always seeing a child as the innocent left you open to not seeing when the child was scheming to take you down. It

Steerpike was, of course, alive with ideas and projects. These two half-witted women were a gift. That they should be the sisters of Lord Sepulchrave was of tremendous strategic value. They would prove an advance on the Prunesquallors, if not intellectually at any rate socially, and that at the moment was what mattered. And in any case, the lower the mentality of his employers the more scope for his own projects.

Politics were so very simple, the Cardinal thought, just so long as a man believed no one, double-crossed everyone, kept a full treasury, and inveigled others into doing the dirty work.

They were Danes, which meant they were planning mischief.

To begin, you will recognize that I am to be queen soon and you are not a liberty to tell me what to do, under any circumstance. His eyes widened with surprise. Now, there's a winning scheme if ever I heard one --befriend others by beating them on the head with your scepter.

What are you up to?" she asked. "Why would you think I'm up to anything?" Her lips pursed before she said, "You wouldn't be you if you weren't up to something." He smiled at that. "I do believe that was a compliment." "It wasn't necessarily intended as such." "But nonetheless," he said mildly, "that's how I choose to take it." -Sophie & Benedict

We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we're faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.

He's] a rat. A first-class double-A-battery-run rat.

What's a little maiming and treachery between friends?

You are the worst kind of liar. You justify your actions. If you see a need, your arrogance precludes you from ever considering that there may be an alternative aside from your scheming and manipulations.

It was only when these nefarious doings were satisfactorily completed that Steerpike visited the aunts for the second time and re-primed them in their very simple rôles as arsonists.

I suppose he isn't above trying to use a respectable lunatic.

She wasn't blotto, she was plotting.