Canny Quotes & Sayings

The most holy cannibalism you can perform is to eat the flesh and blood of sagacity, and by sharing it with other wisdom thirsty cannibals. — Michael Bassey Johnson

I notice that Andy is watching our exchange with the still, silent fascination of a fly on the wall that is canny enough to be aware of the existence of swatters. — Charles Stross

You don't have to be so chaste, you know. It's not like I'm naked." Pausing in front of her closet, she looked back at me, her expression canny. "You haven't seen me naked, have you?"
"No!" My answer came out distinctly rushed.
She grinned at my lie and pulled some jeans from the closet floor. "Well, unless you want to see me now, you'd better turn around. — Maggie Stiefvater

He was a canny old rascal. "I'm no pirate," James said. "I have been in the navy since I was eleven." "The way my daughter tells it, you hailed our late and not particularly lamented skipper, and threatened him with a broadside. When Molineaux did not heave to, you dismasted the Sally and boarded her. And it was the Wasp that sailed away with the gold. If you don't think that's piracy, my boy, I suggest you make a closer study of the word. — Donna Thorland

One touch of regret- not the canny substitute but the true regret from the heart- would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different institution. — E. M. Forster

She eyes him warily. Exactly the same way she did when he came into her office
years ago.
It comes into his mind to wonder why she is always so alert in his presence. In
college, he used to think that she was afraid of his intellect, but he's known
for years that this is the last of her worries. At Black Sun Systems, he
figured that it was just typical female guardedness -- Juanita was afraid he was
trying to get her into the sack. But this, too, is pretty much out of the
question.
At this late date in his romantic career, he is just canny enough to come up
with a new theory: She's being careful because she likes him. She likes him in
spite of herself. He is exactly the kind of tempting but utterly wrong romantic
choice that a smart girl like Juanita must learn to avoid.
That's definitely it. There's something to be said for getting older. — Neal Stephenson

Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions ... — Gore Vidal

Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded consumer of popular media did not bar one from also enjoying being manipulated by it. — Hanne Blank

Many senators have developed a canny sense of what will play best for the audience. — Jessica Savitch

Energy efficiency should be on the priority list for all home improvement work these days. Canny builders will be able to provide homeowners with energy efficient measures which help them to save money and the planet. — Sarah Beeny

Frugal is an old-fashioned, mostly unused word and frugality is is an old-fashioned mostly unused virtue that has been waiting for hard times to come back. The Scots have another word for it - canny.

Keith Smith, Hard Times Handbook, 1984 — Keith Smith

Failure to conform to social norms. I prefer to define my sociopathy as a set of traits that inform my personality but don't define me: I am generally free of entangling and irrational emotions, I am strategic and canny, I am intelligent and confident and charming, but I also struggle to react appropriately to other people's confusing and emotion-driven social cues. — M.E. Thomas

In December 1790, with other options foreclosed, Hamilton revived a proposal he had floated in his Report on Public Credit: an excise tax on whiskey and other domestic spirits. He knew the measure would be loathed in rural areas that thrived on moonshine, but he thought this might be more palatable to farmers than a land tax. Hamilton confessed to Washington an ulterior political motive for this liquor tax: he wanted to lay "hold of so valuable a resource of revenue before it was generally preoccupied by the state governments." As with assumption, he wanted to starve the states of revenue and shore up the federal government. Jefferson did not exaggerate Hamilton's canny capacity to clothe political objectives in technical garb. There were hidden agendas buried inside Hamilton's economic program, agendas that he tended to share with high-level colleagues but not always with the public. To — Ron Chernow

The idea had always struck Shader as bizarre: entrusting the governance of a country to the whims of an uneducated mob. No sense in it. No continuity. Not to mention that a canny would-be tyrant could easily hoodwink the masses into electing him. It was one small step from freedom to dictatorship. — D.P. Prior

We live in a quick-fix society where we need instant gratification for everything. Too fat? Get lipo-sucked. Stringy hair? Glue on extensions. Wrinkles and lines? Head to the beauty shop for a pot of the latest miracle skin stuff. It's all a beautiful £1 billion con foisted upon insecure women by canny cosmetic conglomerates. — Joan Collins

For the man was canny, he was intuitive, he anticipated everything. He continually looked over his shoulders, he looked into the background with mirrors, he locked his sleeping room at night, he could pick out a whisper in the wind, he could register the slightest added value a man put into his words, he could probably read the faltering and perfidy in Bob's face. He once numbered the spades on a playing card that skittered across the street a city block away; he licked his daughter's cut finger and there wasn't even a scar the next day; he wrestled with his son and the two Fords at once one afternoon and rarely even tilted - it was like grappling with a tree. When Jesse predicted rain, it rained; when he encouraged plants, they grew; when he scorned animals, they retreated; whomever he wanted to stir, he astonished. — Ron Hansen

She avoids deep thought like an empty restaurant, not out of stupidity, but a canny resolve to be happy. — Alex Shakar

Children were in fact ferocious little animals, sharp and canny and hurt and eager to inflict hurt themselves, who were trying to get what they needed in life. — Pamela Erens

Avner had lived too long and become too canny to claim the crown of Israel for himself. — Geraldine Brooks

Oh, this beast? It's ... perspicacious loris. 'Perspicacious' meaning 'wise or canny'."
"Get stuffed," Bovril said, then giggled.
"And it insults people," Telsa said. "How peculiar. — Scott Westerfeld

Son, it's easy tae be guid oan a fu' belly. It's when a man's goat two bites an' wan o' them he'll share, ye ken whit he's made o'. Listen. In ony country in the world, who are the only folk that ken whit it's like tae leeve in that country? The folk at the boattom. The rest can a' kid themselves oan. They can afford to hiv fancy ideas. We canny, son. We loass the wan idea o' who we are, we're deid. We're wan anither. Tae survive, we'll respect wan anither. When the time comes, we'll a' move forward thegither, or nut at all. — William McIlvanney

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor. — Alain De Botton

Teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation — Jerome Bruner

He stepped to her again, laid his lips on her brow. "But I want children with you, my lovely Eve. One day."
"One day being far, far in the future. Like, I don't know, say a decade when ... Hold on. Children is plural."
He eased back, grinned. "Why, so it is
nothing slips by my canny cop."
"You really think if I ever actually let you plant something in me
they're like aliens in there, growing little hands and feet." She shuddered. "Creepy. If I ever did that, popped a kid out
which I think is probably as pleasant a process as having your eyeballs pierced by burning, poisonous sticks, I'd say, 'Whoopee, let's do this again?' Have you recently suffered head trauma?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Could be coming. Any second. — J.D. Robb

Savings will not make you rich. Only canny investments do that. The role of savings is to keep you from becoming poor. — Jane Bryant Quinn

Churchill was the canny political animal, very devious, bursting with energy and determination, learning as hard as he could. — Lord Mountbatten

An alliance with France was enlisted in the war for independence from Britain, then loosened in the aftermath, as France undertook revolution and embarked on a European crusade in which the United States had no direct interest. When President Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address - delivered in the midst of the French revolutionary wars - counseled that the United States "steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world" and instead "safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies," he was issuing not so much a moral pronouncement as a canny judgment about how to exploit America's comparative advantage: the United States, a fledgling power safe behind oceans, did not have the need or the resources to embroil itself in continental controversies over the balance of power. — Henry Kissinger

A canny reader here may object that there's some kind of Zenoid sleight of hand going on in the above proof, and might ask why a similar hankie procedure and series couldn't be applied to the irrational numbers to quote-unquote prove that the total % of Line-space taken up by the irrationals is also 2*(Infinitesimally small symbol). The reason such a proof can't work is that, no matter how infinitely or even (Infinity to the Infinity symbol) ly many red hankies you drape, there will always be more irrational numbers than hankies. Always. Cantor proved this, too. — David Foster Wallace

Schmidt is a canny little kobold. — Elizabeth Peters

My need for love had gone underground, like a canny toothache. — Alice Munro

Tabini was at least canny enough in the differences between atevi and human to know that, gut level, he might think he understood - but chances were very good that he wouldn't, couldn't, and never would, unaided by the paidhi, come up with the right forecast of human behavior because he didn't come with the right hardwiring. Average people didn't analyze what they thought: they thought they thought, and half of it was gut reaction. — C.J. Cherryh

Never say anything to hurt anyone. Moreover ... refrain from double talk, from shrewd and canny remarks that are designed to advance our interests at someone's disadvantage. We are to turn our back upon evil, and in every way possible, do good, help people and bring blessings into their lives. — Norman Vincent Peale

Nellie Cashman, from Midleton, County Cork, made a mint providing "bed, board, and booze" to the gold and silver miners all over the western US and Canada. She was a prodigious entrepreneur, running and owning numerous stores, restaurants, and hotels in various mining settlements. While working the bar of her hotel, canny Nellie was able to buy a number of very lucrative mines by discretely listening to the gossip of drunken prospectors. — Rashers Tierney

They call it "young music"; I see, however, that the record industry makes millions by the carload for shrewd older people! They invoke the name of spontaneity, nonconformity and originality; actually, canny "clothing industrialists" manipulate the field, undisturbed sovereigns! They call themselves revolutionaries, but the overscrupulous attentions devoted to their hair and their dress risk creating merely effeminates. — Pope John Paul I

No matter how canny you think you are, something can come along, bam, and put you on your prat. — Raymond E. Feist

The most dazzling aspect of 'Possession' is Ms. Byatt's canny invention of letters, poems and diaries from the 19th century. — Jay Parini

I am sure now that life is not what it is purported to be and that nature, in the canny words of the Scotch theologue, 'is not as natural as it looks. — Loren Eiseley

There used to be a canny politician in the Hyde Park area in Chicago in which I at one time lived for several years. His slogan was "I am for harmony if I have to use an axe." As "Secretary of Charm," if and when my merits and ambitions are recognized by my appointment to that office, I will take a page out of old "Doc" Jamieson's book. My motto will be "I will have charm, even if I have to use a club. — Beatrice Fairfax

Dorothy did feel threatened. Whose child was or wasn't she? Almost unconsciously, she detached her-self a little from love. She would be canny. She would not invest too much passion in loving her parents, her acting parents, in case the love turned out to be disproportionate, unreturned, the parent not-a-parent. — A.S. Byatt