Quotes About Knavery

No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.

Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.

Pay attention to minute particulars. Take care of the little ones. Generalization and abstraction are The plea of the hypocrite, scoundrel, and knave.

God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest.

How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.

What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all.

A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days.

A man who first tried to guess 'what the public wants,' and then preached that as Christianity because the public wants it, would be a pretty mixture of fool and knave

his view that in framing a government "every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no other end in all his actions but private interests." The task of government was not to stop selfish striving—a hopeless task—but to harness it for the public good.

It means that you two, precious father and son, would be a pair of knaves if you had sense enough; but, failing in that, you are only a pair of fools!

For my part, if a man must needs be a knave, I would have him a debonair knave, and I liked Rupert Hentzau better than his long-faced, close-eyed companions.

A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days.

That man is thought a dangerous knave, Or zealot plotting crime, Who for advancement of his kind Is wiser than his time.

stationer, that Riddlesden, the attorney, was a very knave.

the pleasures of the world are chiefly folly, and the business of it mostly knavery, and both nothing better than vanity; the men of pleasure tearing one another to pieces from the emulation of spending money, and the men of business from envy in getting it.

You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.

When the Many are rulers, it cannot but be that, again, knavery is bred in the state; but now the knaves do not grow to hate one another—they become fast friends. For they combine together to maladminister the public concerns. This goes on until one man takes charge of affairs for the Many and puts a stop to the knaves. As a result of this, he wins the admiration of the Many, and, being so admired, lo! you have your despot again;

Necessity makes an honest man a knave.

It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend; but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not.

Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, But good men starve for want of impudence.

Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.

What is got over the Devil's back (that's by knavery), is spent under the belly (that's by lechery).

If he sinned, she tortured him. If he drank, and lied, was often a poltroon, sometimes a knave, she wielded the lash unmercifully.

Necessity makes an honest man a knave.