Quotes & Sayings About Cunning

Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a clerk. Stalin owes nothing to rhetoric. He governs from his office, thanks to a bureaucracy that obeys his every nod and gesture. It's striking that Russian propaganda, in the criticisms it makes of us, always holds itself within certain limits. Stalin, that cunning Caucasian, is apparently quite ready to abandon European Russia, if he thinks that a failure to solve her problems would cause him to lose everything. Let nobody think Stalin might reconquer Europe from the Urals! It is as if I were installed in Slovakia, and could set out from there to reconquer the Reich. This is the catastrophe that will cause the loss of the Soviet Empire. — Adolf Hitler

The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management. — James F. Cooper

Those cunning bastards at Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Dior knew exactly what was required to trap a poor man. She smelled wonderful. — Jo Nesbo

I'd cuddle with you, but I don't want to sweat off my riff and solo."
She laughed. "That must be the first time that excuse has ever been used to avoid after-sex cuddling. — Olivia Cunning

We make no apology then for raising our voices loud to a world that is ripening in sin the lord has said, Say nothing but repentance unto this generation; The adversary is subtle, cunning, he knows that he cannot induce good men and women immediately to do major evils so he moves slyly, whispering half truths until he has his intended victims following him finally he clamps his chains upon them and fetters them tight, and then he laughs at their discomfiture and their misery. — Spencer W. Kimball

What's truly sexy about a woman isn't what she wears. It isn't how much time and attention she spends on her hair. It's no that her bra matches her panties. It's the way she thinks, moves, speaks. That's what's sexy about a woman. — Olivia Cunning

I feel you, Kellen," she whispered. "Inside my body. Inside my soul. I feel you. — Olivia Cunning

As a farmer, man himself became closely attached to the landscape, firmly rooted to the soil that supported him. At times the soil seemed bountiful and kindly and again stubborn and unfriendly, but it was always a challenge to man's cunning. — Charles Kellogg

[O]ne has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to embark on the project of recovering lost life. And I think it may be possible to review 'the chronicles of wasted time.' William Morris wrote in The Dream of John Ball that men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected, and then be compelled again to defend it under another name. We are all of us very good at self-persuasion and I strive to be alert to its traps, but a version of what Hegel called 'the cunning of history' is a parallel commentary that I fight to keep alive in my mind. — Christopher Hitchens

Love is an artful arrangement of artless pretensions, whereby we labor to appear innocent in what we desire to be most cunning. — Norm MacDonald

It was not for me, after these last seventy-two hours, to reject as too outlandish the possibility that the situation for him here had driven George crazy. Yet I did reject it. It was just too insipid a conclusion. Not everybody was cray. Resolute is not crazy. Deluded is not crazy. To be thwarted, vengeful, terrified, treacherous
this is not to be crazy. Not even fanatically held illusions are crazy, and deceit certainly isn't crazy
deceit, deviousness, cunning, cynicism, all of that is far from crazy ... and there, that, deceit, there was the key to my confusion. Of course! — Philip Roth

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty. — Jean Genet

This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Would you like to sit?" Kellen asked her.
"You'd better do it soon," Owen whispered close to her ear, "or I'm going to bend you over that table and break the club's no-penetration-in-the-lounge rule. — Olivia Cunning

Has Trey ever told you that he's a virgin?" Reagan asked, stroking Ethan's hair with one hand and Trey's with the other.
Ethan lifted his head and snorted with laughter. "Is today opposite day? — Olivia Cunning

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. — Jonathan Swift

Well, I am no village cunning woman, no frightened merry-begot, but a woman born to riches, and
educated from the time I can remember, and given all that I could possibly desire. And now in my
twenty-second year, already a mother and soon perhaps to be a widow, I rule in this place. I ruled
before my mother gave to me all her secrets, and her great familiar, Lasher, and I mean to study this
thing, and make use of it, and allow it to enhance my considerable strength. — Anne Rice

Depend upon it, he who wishes to win the prize must come on the principle that two and two make four. — Nicholas Wiseman

A Myrddraal has less cunning than a woman, and a Trolloc fights with more honor. And a goat has more sense. — Robert Jordan

But she just tried to push the blame off onto the serpent: "The woman said, "the serpent deceived me, and I ate" Gen 3:13. That was true enough 1Tim 2:14, but the serpent's guilt did not justify her sin. Again, James 1:14 stands as a reminder that whenever we sin, it is because we are drawn away by our own lust. No matter what means Satan may use to beguile us into sin -- no matter how subtle his cunning--- the responsibility for the deed itself still lies with the sinner and no one else. Eve could not escape accountability for what she had done by transferring the blame. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

I need a million dollars to pay the ransom on my kidnapped poodle. — Olivia Cunning

If you disrespect my woman like that again, I'll kick your fuckin' ass. You won't get back up. — Olivia Cunning

The eyes of a man are of no use without the observing power. Telescopes and microscopes are cunning contrivances, but they cannot see of themselves. — Edwin Paxton Hood

By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane. — Vladimir Nabokov

There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime. — Victor Hugo

We understand not one another: I am too courtly, and thou art too cunning. At — William Shakespeare

I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use
silence, exile, and cunning. — James Joyce

All great enterprises are about logistics. Not genius or inspiration or flights of imagination, skill or cunning, but logistics. — Tom McCarthy

Caliban: As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island. — William Shakespeare

There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things their primordial form exists,
And cunning alchemists
Could re-create the rose with all its members
From its own ashes, but without the bloom,
Without the lost perfume
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more
The rose of youth restore?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour
Renew this phantom-flower? — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Man's Unhappiness ... comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, with which all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite ... Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarreling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: It is ... the Shadow of Ourselves. — Thomas Carlyle

Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed. — Richard Adams

And here it is that I miss my Watson. By cunning questions and ejaculations of wonder he could elevate my simple art, which is but systematized common sense, into a prodigy. When I tell my own story I have no such aid. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices. — Amos Oz

Be cunning and don't panic. Rely upon the agility of your wit. — Eugene F. Rice Jr.

But I found signs of their trespass: a burned patch planted with a fistful of grain, a tree felled or stripped of fruit, a deer strung up in a snare. I never saw a poacher. They were too cunning, and for cause: the foresters would take a man's hands and eyes and leave him to the mercy of the wolves for such an offense. It was bad enough to steal the king's game, but snares were an abomnination. The gods abhor weapons that leave the hand, coward' weapons such as javelins, bows and arrows, slings. No man or beast should die by such means. — Sarah Micklem

Rabbits need dignity and, above all, the will to accept their fate. — Richard Adams

As they sang the hobbit felt in love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Hatred and greed are heavy loads. Your motive, on the other hand, is love. And instead of priding yourselves on your cunning, you recognize how weak you are ... so weak that you must depend totally on the Spirit of God. — Brother Andrew

Used"

You don't see me
Blind to the real me
I'm not who you think I should be
But I can't be someone I'm not
I'll try to be who you need,
what you need,
I fail again
tear me, cut me make me bleed
If it opens your heart to me
Just don't leave me with nothing
less than nothing
Like the last time
use me
It's better than existing without you

~Sed's lyrics — Olivia Cunning

The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yet behind all of the populist hot air, and the big shot persona, is a man who is very cunning. As a real estate mogul worth billions, a man like Donald Trump knows how to relate to an audience better than a politician. He has to as each transaction he is working on can increase his personal wealth. Moreover, he doesn't have the time to make the connections while trying to close a deal that an average politician does. He has to, as a salesman, become expert at being a "five minute friend". Every move has to count in building a credible connection that will get him to, and beyond, the closing table. — Robert Montgomerie

Hope deceives more men than cunning does. — Luc De Clapiers

Heroes aren't perfect; with a god as one parent and a mortal as the other, they're perpetually teetering between two destinies. What tips them toward greatness is a sidekick, a human connection who helps turn the spigot on the power of compassion. Empathy, the Greeks believed, was a source of strength, not softness; the more you recognized yourself in others and connected with their distress, the more endurance, wisdom, cunning, and determination you could tap into. — Christopher McDougall

Is this man your hunka hunka burning love?" Elvis asked. Myrna laughed. "I'll say." "Does this woman have you all shook up?" Elvis asked. Brian grinned. "Yeah, she does. — Olivia Cunning

If there were a Jessica Chase instruction manual, it would be written backwards in Arabic Pig Latin and twelve thousand pages long with random pages missing. — Olivia Cunning

I glory, more in the cunning purchase of my wealth than in the glad possession. — Ben Jonson

O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight!
... Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'
How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,
That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, though I mistake my view;
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.
- Shakespeare's Sonnet 148 — William Shakespeare

In the countries of Europe, one after another, the gentleman has been ousted by politicians and entrepreneurs, as materialism has given rewards to the sort of cunning incompatible with any kind of idealism. — Richard M. Weaver

Only later during her prayers had it come to her how cunning Satan could be. Her love for Marcus could become a tool against her, for when her heart and mind were on Marcus, Julia lay forgotten.
Nothing must distract her from her mission here. And no one. — Francine Rivers

I'm going to let myself love you now. Don't freak out on me."
He laughed. "No promises. — Olivia Cunning

When Adam arrived behind the stage, the entire band was waiting in the wings. Their pointed glares bounced right off him. Adam didn't give a shit if they were pissed. He was in love. — Olivia Cunning

But where do you live mostly now?"
With the lost boys."
Who are they?"
They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expanses. I'm captain."
What fun it must be!"
Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see we have no female companionship."
Are none of the others girls?"
Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams. — J.M. Barrie

Dare said that Brian had a baby this morning," she said. "Yeah, I never thought Brian would ever be able to push it out through such a little hole. It was fuckin' brutal. — Olivia Cunning

That he didn't demand to know why she was so upset and stupid won the guy so many brownie points, he could have led every Girl Scout troop in the contiguous forty-eight states. — Olivia Cunning

And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us. — Plato

She carefully placed the little crab back in the sand and nudged it toward the surf. Run for your life, Pinchy. I've seen the way this man eats. — Olivia Cunning

Let's see what you've got, Dr. Kink E. Inventor — Olivia Cunning

Heinrich had a reputation locally for cunning, but Ankh-Morpork had overtaken cunning a thousand years ago, had sped past devious, had left artful far behind, and had now, by a roundabout route, arrived at straightforward. — Terry Pratchett

The best day of my life used to be the day I asked you to marry me onstage in Pittsburgh, but as memorable as that was, today has been even better. — Olivia Cunning

I thought I knew what love was, that I understood its depth, its importance, its beauty and the happiness and the heartache it brings." He huffed - a small sound of amusement. "I wasn't even close. When I look at you, I see radiance. I know pure happiness. Everything else pales in comparison. The thought of living a single moment without you tears me apart inside. Just when I think I love you as much as possible, you open your heart to me a little more, and my love expands - grows - wanting to fill every emptiness inside you. — Olivia Cunning

See not the face..
but only the eyes,
of the poker face. — Toba Beta

No doubt other writers have often put a thing more brilliantly, more subtly than even a very cunning artist in words can hope to emulate, a supreme phrase being a bit of luck that only happens now and then. And inasmuch as the condiments and secret travail of human nature are always the same, and that certain psychological moments must ever and ever recur, what more tempting than to pin down such a moment with the blow of a borrowed hammer? — Ethel Smyth

That evening Squealer explained privately to the other animals that Napoleon had never in reality been opposed to the windmill. On the contrary, it was he who had advocated it in the beginning, and the plan which Snowball had drawn on the floor of the incubator shed had actually been stolen from among Napoleon's papers. The windmill was, in fact, Napoleon's own creation. Why, then, asked somebody, had he spoken so strongly against it? Here Squealer looked very sly. That, he said, was Comrade Napoleon's cunning. He had seemed to oppose the windmill, simply as a manoeuvre to get rid of Snowball, who was a dangerous character and a bad influence. — George Orwell

This beautiful, wonderful, sexy-as-sin woman is mine. You may look - and seethe with envy - but never touch. — Olivia Cunning

For as long as I could remember, a part of me had been waiting for the day it would happen; with the cunning that comes to people whose minds have been stripped to one desire, she picked the only day we weren't waiting for. — Tana French

It would be a very accurate historian who could pinpoint the precise day when the Japanese changed from being fiendish automatons who copied everything from the West, to becoming skilled and cunning engineers who would leave the West standing. But the Wasabi had been designed on that one confused day, and combined the traditional bad points of most Western cars with a host of innovative disasters the avoidance of which had made firms like Honda and Toyota what they were today. Newt — Terry Pratchett

Pantheists creep into the ministry, but they are generally cunning enough to concede the bredath of their minds beneath Christian phraseology. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Think of music as being a great snarl of a city [ ... ]. In the years I spent living there, I came to know its streets. Not just the main streets. Not just the alleys. I knew shortcuts and rooftops and parts of the sewers. Because of this, I could move through the city like a rabbit in a bramble. I was quick and cunning an clever.
Denna, on the other hand, had never been trained. She knew nothing of shortcuts. You'd think she'd be forced to wander the city, lost and helpless, trapped in a twisting maze of mortared stone. But instead, she simply walked through the walls. She didn't know any better. Nobody had ever told her she couldn't. Because of this, she moved through the city like some faerie creature. She walked roads no one else could see, and it made her music wild and strange and free. — Patrick Rothfuss

Thou shalt understand that it is a science most profitable, and passing all other sciences, for to learn to die. For a man to know that he shall die, that is common to all men; as much as there is no man that may ever live or he hath hope or trust thereof; but thou shalt find full few that hath this cunning to learn to die. I shall give thee the mystery of this doctrine; the which shall profit thee greatly to the beginning of ghostly health, and to a stable fundamental of all virtues. — Henry Suso

[Books] were devices as crassly practical for storing or transmitting language, as the latest Silicon Valley miracles. But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our mind and souls, in a spiritual adventure. — Kurt Vonnegut

Silence, exile, cunning and so on ... it's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work. — Don DeLillo

Jim: By the way Artie. How are you going to escape?
Artie: Oh, the usual way. Guile.. cunning ... trickery.
Wild Wild West Season 3
Night of the Arrow — Wild Wild West TV

TARKIN: The wench hath lied! Deceiving,
cut-throat girl,
Most cunning princess born of
Hell's own heart! — Ian Doescher

Teddy risked a look backward and nodded as he handed Henry his hat. The two men shook hands and then walked past each other Teddy moving in the direction of Henry's room and Henry the hat pulled down over his face toward the Cutting carriage that was waiting by the curb. — Anna Godbersen

Kellen sighed in exasperation. "I've told you a million times that my funk, as you call it, has little to do with sex."
"Then you must be doing it wrong — Olivia Cunning

It can be seductive and cunning. Darkness wears many faces, and some of those faces can seem, at first, like allies. — P.C. Cast

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

Writing can be a bit like unfolding something ... Slowly, the writer reveals what's happening. But that's only half of what's going on. Writers are very cunning people who are not only unfolding and revealing. Just like conjurors and magicians, they are hiding stuff too. — Michael Rosen

Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery. — Ovid

This ring tells the world you're mine and no one else's," Sed said, then he slipped the ring onto Jessica's finger.
"This ring tells horny bitches that you're off-limits," she countered. — Olivia Cunning

I love those dimples.
He hated the damn things, but if they made her happy, he'd be sure to smile like a dipshit more often. — Olivia Cunning

I want a History of Looking. For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity. Even odder: it was before Photography that men had the most to say about the vision of the double. Heautoscopy was compared with an hallucinosis; for centuries this was a great mythic theme. — Roland Barthes

what matters the most is a mix of strategy, cunning, honesty, patience, and the readiness to grab every opportunity. Above all, a girl must always be willing to do what is necessary. ACCIDENTS — Amy Tan

Yes, word had gotten around about my amusing little defeathering trick (note: made the chicken naked). Apparently we couldn't just eat the poor thing and be done with it. Apparently we had to knit cunning lil' sweaters for it so it could squawk around the yard, feeling fancy. — Cate Tiernan

CHORONZON: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler.
MORPHEUS: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing.
CHORONZON: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing.
MORPHEUS: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged.
CHORONZON: I am a snake, spider-devouring, posion-toothed.
MORPHEUS: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed.
CHORONZON: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying.
MORPHEUS: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing.
CHORONZON: I am a nova, all-exploding ... planet-cremating.
MORPHEUS: I am the Universe
all things encompassing, all life embracing.
CHORONZON: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds ... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?
MORPHEUS: I am hope. — Neil Gaiman

Somewhere in [China's] soul lurks the cunning of an old dog, and it is a cunning that is strangely impressive. What a strange old soul! What a great old soul! — Lin Yutang

He wondered if he, too, was tempted by cunning. Maybe he was drawn as well to the biggest gamble. — Marie Rutkoski

To love God, which was a thing far excelling all the cunning that is possible for us in this life to obtain. — Thomas More

If beauty isn't genius it usually signals at least a high level of animal cunning. — Peter York

Two more [birds added to her cage]. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach!? - - - Miss Flite to Esther. [I thought a the last two a bit strange until I looked and saw the old definitions of gammon (as being double talk or obfuscation) and spinach (as being a spurious and unwanted growth). How appropriately summarized the situation! — Charles Dickens

Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear! — Herman Melville

All your winning or losing of a good conscience, is in your first buying; for such is the deceitfulness of sin, and the cunning conveyance of that old serpent, that if his head be once entering in, his whole body will easily follow after; and if he make you handsomely to swallow gnats at first, he will make you swallow camels ere all be done. Oh, happy they who dash the little ones of Babylon against the stones (Ps. 137:9)! — George Gillespie

Henry stirs into life. 'Do I retain you for what is easy? Do you think it is for your personal beauty? The charm of your presence? I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents. But do not be a viper in my bosom. You know my decision. Execute it.'
pg. 585 — Hilary Mantel

More are taken in by hope than by cunning. — Luc De Clapiers

History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done. — Sydney J. Harris

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise. — Francis Bacon

His mouth was a little too wide and snaked from corner to corner. His nose had been broken a few times, and when you looked at him straight on like I was doing as I stared at him across the circle bar, you could really tell. But his eyes were beautiful, cunning and otherworldly. His hair was a controlled mess; wispy dark strands that swooped across his forehead with long sideburns. He had high cheekbones, a strong jawline. When you combined all the parts, they equaled so much more than the sum. He was exotically, dangerously beautiful.
He'd been mine once. He'd broken my heart once.
And he was here to kill me. He only needed to do that once, too. — Karina Halle

To make the cunning artless, tame the rude, subdue the haughty, shake the undaunted soul; yea, put a bridle in the lion's mouth, and lead him forth as a domestic cur,
these are the triumphs of all-powerful beauty. — Joanna Baillie

Thus by such victory, not by machines but in oppositions to the principle to the principles of machines, has the freedom of states been preserved by the cunning of architects. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio