Quotes About Cunning

I'd rather be Jack be smart, than Jack be quick. Watch out for the man with the big fat licking stick.

To be pure in heart is to take no delight in cunning, but converse sincerely with men, and express nothing, by word or look, which is not felt in the heart.

Hope deceives more men than cunning does.

A man who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp lookout and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of more imagination than he

The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning he blunders and betrays.

There is a kind of shrewdness many men have that enables them to get money. It is the shrewdness of the fox after the chicken. A low order of mentality often goes with it.

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.

What is denominated discretion in man we call cunning in brutes.

Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?

There are no events so disastrous that adroit men do not draw some advantage from them, nor any so fortunate that the imprudent cannot turn to their own prejudice.

...the greatest weapon against big stupid men was a sharp mind.

Don't think so much of your own Cunning, as to forget other Men's; a Cunning Man is overmatched by a cunning Man and a Half.

A cunning fellow is man, inventive beyond all expectation, he reaches sometimes evil and sometimes good

You can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.

Wealth: A cunning device of Fate whereby men are made captive, and burdened with responsibilites from which only Death can file their fetters.

Intelligent men are dangerous.

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.

The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him; and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others.

The most ingenious men continually pretend to condemn tricking--but this is often done that they may use it more conveniently themselves, when some great occasion or interest offers itself to them.

To a crafty man, a crafty and an halfe.

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

No fox is foxier than man!

A real man's weapon is his mind.

O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.