quotations about cunning
Cunning is natural to mankind. It is the sense of our weakness, and an attempt to effect by concealment what we cannot do openly and by force.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
How like a hateful ape,
Detected, grinning, 'midst his pilfer'd hoard,
A cunning man appears, whose secret frauds
Are open'd to the day!
JOANNA BAILLIE
Basil
Cunning is seeing a hundred yards ahead--wisdom, fifty miles in advance.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims
Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Lear
Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from open day. He that walks in the sunshine goes boldly forward by the nearest way; he sees that where the path is straight and even, he may proceed in security, and where it is rough and crooked he easily complies with the turns, and avoids the obstructions. But the traveller in the dusk fears more as he sees less; he knows there may be danger, and, therefore, suspects that he is never safe, tries every step before he fixes his foot, and shrinks at every noise lest violence should approach him. Wisdom comprehends at once the end and the means, estimates easiness or difficulty, and is cautious or confident in due proportion. Cunning discovers little at a time, and has no other means of certainty than multiplication of stratagems and superfluity of suspicion. The man of cunning always considers that he can never be too safe, and, therefore, always keeps himself enveloped in a mist, impenetrable, as he hopes, to the eye of rivalry or curiosity.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler
Cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.
LORD CHESTERFIELD
Letters
The first you see is that cunning smile
Then you see what's beyond those shining teeth
NASUM
"Creature"
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Cunning,", Essays
Wisdom and truth, the offspring of the sky, are immortal; while cunning and deception, the meteors of the earth, after glittering for a moment, must pass away.
ROBERT HALL
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
The very cunning conceal their cunning; the indifferently shrewd boast of it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Cunning is a short blanket--if you pull it over your face, you expose your feet.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery.
BRUYERE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Cunning is the mere ape of wisdom, and all hate its low tricks.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
It would be doing cunning too much honor to call it an inferior species of true discernment.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
All my own experience of life teaches me the contempt of cunning, not the fear. The phrase "profound cunning," has always seemed to me a contradiction in terms. I never knew a cunning mind which was not either shallow, or on some point diseased.
ANNA JAMESON
A Commonplace Book of Thoughts
It has been a sort of maxim, that the greatest art is to conceal art; but I know not how, among some people we meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear cunning.
RICHARD STEELE
The Tatler, Jun. 29, 1710
Well skilled in cunning wiles, he could make white of black and black of white.
OVID
Metamorphoses
Cunning, when it is once detected, loses its force, and makes a man incapable of bringing about even those events which he might have done had he passed only for a plain man.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, November 17, 1711
I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.
ROWAN ATKINSON
Blackadder
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
WILLIAM BLAKE
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell