Quotes About Cunning

Life is a snake. They are the same, Firdaus. If the snake realises you are not a snake, it will bite you. And if life knows you have no sting, it will devour you.

I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.

The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.

Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

It wasn't that they were all pretty, but they were all attractive; they'd obviously taken endless trouble over their appearance, playing up any good feature and being clever about the remainder, and it was really delightful to walk down a street past this moving frieze of faces and figures, each of which seemed to have its own cunning distinction. They

Poker: the art of civilized bushwhacking.

Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my Master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie.

For everyone knew Fiachnae would rise again, it's what the Irish did, and mac Báetáin was cannier than most.

I saw that I'd get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.

Human beings are like that, though. They'll do the most unbelievably cruel things when you least expect it.

What the tanuki doesn't realize is that people who affect to believe all our nonsense often harbor evil and insidious plots in their hearts

Conheçais vós, vossa própria pusilanimidade, vossos mistérios, vossa perversidade, vossa ardileza e vossa feitiçaria.

Education is...[A process] which makes one rogue cleverer than another.

The fox has a hundred proverbs; ninety-nine are about poultry.

Even the sheep think, I do believe, though they look so stupid. Everything in creation thinks, that's my idea. Look at a little beetle, how clever it is, how cunning in defense, how patient in labor, how full of disquiet;—but you cannot understand, you are only a nursling.

Skilled in every trick, a worthy heir of his paternal craft, he would make black look like white, and white look black.

Art lies by its own artifice.

Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?

There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.

he was a sleekit, spying yadswiver

Women are sneaky.