Quotes About Cleverness

Playing nuts is a game like any other, neither better than tops, nor worse than cards. The game is played in various ways. There are 'holes' and 'bank' and 'caps.' But every game finishes up in the same way. One boy loses, another wins. And, as always, he who wins is a clever fellow, a smart fellow, a good fellow.

Too clever is dumb.

Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

Just as nothing produces paralyzing apathy like doubt and resignation, nothing produces cleverness like staring down a crisis with a lionhearted snarl.

Look for Joy: that's God's echo, and his footprint. Happiness . . . happiness and wittiness and cleverness do not count for much when the darkness falls. Joy is tougher.

When one thousand people are engaged in agriculture and warfare, yet there is a single man among them engaged in Poems, Documents, argumentativeness and cleverness, then one thousand people all will become remiss in agriculture and warfare. … This is the teaching that impoverishes the state and weakens the army.

Let's just be smart this time. I'm looking for smart.

You'd be surprised, you can do a lot more damage with your brains than with your fists.

Better to be strong,' he [Lolo] said...'if you can't be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who's strong. But always better to be strong yourself.

Well, if anybody ever compiles a list of the high-water marks of human cleverness, I'm afraid that's unlikely to merit consideration.

The realization of the perfect riposte three hours after the argument: hindser, stairwit, retrotort, afterism.

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous, Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape. Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.

I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too.

Cleverness is not wisdom.

I've definitely learned that if you want to have power as a woman in Shakespeare's time, and it's still relevant today, that you have to play a different game than men play, and you have to be a lot cleverer.

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

La prima: mai scegliere l'umorismo se non siamo certi di saperlo maneggiare. L'ironia è la sorella laica della misericordia; il sarcasmo, il fratello antipatico dell'intelligenza.

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

AMBIDEXTROUS, adj. Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.

Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.

Those born dull remain dull

In science, modesty and genius do not coexist well together. (In Washington, modesty and cleverness don't.) Einstein is perhaps the most famous exception to the rule.

The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.