Quotes About Cunning

Professor Snape

In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty. —Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Smart means you know lots of shit. Clever means you can pretend you know it.

Fools lie, clever men stick to the truth.

Cunning and deceit will every time serve a man better than force

Perhaps it is the most cunning and dangerous of all villians," Dagon said quietly. "A Humani

Where's the skill in throwing a hook loaded with tempting bait into the general vicinity of lots of perpetually hungry creatures with brains the size of mustard seeds? You might as well go to a playground, scatter Reese's peanut butter cups around, and club to death the first four year old foolish enough to approach, believing innocently that such treats are readily available in nature.

Pragmatic and clever, he was quite Machiavellian in his approach: "It is better to be feared than loved," he'd say. "Hide your vulnerabilities . . ." "Pick your own time and place for confrontations . . ." "Be truthful but not offensive.

But as I had learned earlier, the trick was not to figure out how not to be stupid, the trick was to be smart instead.

The Cat always lands on his feet,

It's my job to know what others don't. How did you know to make kimchi and sell it on a street corner to earn money? You knew because you wanted to live. I want to live, too, and if I want to live, I have to know things others don't. Now, I'm telling you something valuable.

When a man hunted an animal, whatever its status, the hunt took the form of an extended duel, a contest of strength, skill and cunning between man and beast. In the course of a hunt, Zahariel would grow to know his adversary intimately. In contrast, war was an impersonal affair. As he charged towards the enemy fortress beside his fellow knights, Zahariel realised that he could be struck dead on the battlefield without ever knowing the identity of his killer.

Good Heaven, friend, do not trouble yourself. He will be a clever man who catches me in this way. I know all the cunning tricks and subtle devices which women use to deceive us, and how one is fooled by their dexterity, and I have taken precautions against this mischance. She whom I am marrying possesses all the innocence which may protect my forehead from evil influence.

There is no rampart that will hold out against malice.

Nostalgia is a powerful and cunning witch. If you are not careful, she will seduce you back into the past and such the sap of your life. Then you'll find yourself empty-handed with only misty dreams for comfort.

Diplomacy does not mean to become soft, but to be more cunning like a fox than the normal citizen. Killing two birds with one word.

The devil may seem clever and cunning, but he is still a creature of God. Therefore, God must take all the credits, both good and bad. But that means nothing to Him.

You must be a genius to do business. Otherwise, be armed with a basket full of tricks.

Smart women were his catnip.

Was he he handsome?" she asked with a sly smirk. "Very. He is still, I think." "The devil, they say, goes about in finery." "And if you believe Beelzebub is as cunning as he is attractive, then I think we have found him.

We frustrate many designs against us by pretending not to see them.

A general must be a charlatan.

Money without brains is always dangerous.

It is painful to witness the death of the smallest of God's created beings, much more, one in which life is so vigorously maintained as the Whale! And when I saw this, the largest and most terrible of all created animals bleeding, quivering, dying a victim to the cunning of man, my feelings were indeed peculiar!