Quotes & Sayings About Cunning Man

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

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. — Jack London

The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better.". — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

The Titanic was in more senses than one a fool's paradise. There is nothing that man can build that nature cannot destroy, and far as he may advance in might and knowledge and cunning, her blind strength will always be more than his match. — Filson Young

[ ... ] the sacred - that which is immutable, inviolable and thus infinitely majestic - is in the very substance of our spirit and of our existence. The world is miserable because men live beneath themselves; the error of modern man is that he wants to reform the world without having either the will or the power to reform man, and this flagrant contradiction, this attempt to make a better world on the basis of a worsened humanity, can only end in the very abolition of what is human, and consequently in the abolition of happiness too. Reforming man means bindinghim again to Heaven, reestablishing the broken link; it means tearing him away from the reign of the passions, from the cult of matter, quantity and cunning, and reintegrating him into the world of the spirit and serenity, we would even say: into the world of sufficient reason. — Frithjof Schuon

Yabu-san's a violent man with no scruples whatsoever. He honors nothing but his own interests. Duty, loyalty, tradition, mean nothing to him. His mind has flashes of great cunning, even brilliance. He's equally dangerous as ally or enemy.' 'All commendable virtues. What's to be said against him?' 'A — James Clavell

In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man ... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work. — Henry David Thoreau

Our spiritual history is the history of God-ventriloquists! The truth is that the voice of God is the voice of cunning Man, the ventriloquist's voice! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The Death Star is just full of British actors opening doors and going,Oh ... I ... oh ... What is it Lieutenant Sebastian? It's just the Rebels, sir ... they're here. My God, man! Do they want tea? No, I think they're after something a bit more than that, sir. I don't know what it is, but they've brought a flag. Damn, that's dash cunning of them. — Eddie Izzard

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

An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie. — H.G.Wells

Mary never made it to the board meeting. Cunning Elizabeth simply arranged for her cousin's tennis instructor to "delay" her for an hour or two. The man was evidently a superb athlete, though it was entirely Mary's fault that she fell asleep afterwards. Elizabeth took control of the company that very afternoon, by a vote of six to one, while a sated Mary slept. And the silly girl never knew what hit her. — Barbara Taylor Bradford

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowlegde of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper; outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of proptiety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

When a man possesses the innocence of a child, we call him a fool.
When a child possesses the cunning of a man, we call him an abomination. As with love, knowledge has its seasons. — R. Scott Bakker

In the ancient tales, to which each Viking aspired, strenght was the only virtue, iron the only currency that mattered. Loki with his cunning, whereby a weaker man might outdo a stronger one, was an anathema to these folk. — Mark Lawrence

He thought I was strong, but he was willing to lay down his life to protect me. He thought I was beautiful, but he treated me as a precious gift instead of something to take for his own pleasure. He thought I was worth something, and he was worth everything to me. This man had endured lifetimes of suffering, but he could still love, and give, and dream of his future. He was a leader who would sacrifice himself for the weak, who used all his gifts - his intelligence, his cunning, his strength - to protect others. It was a privilege to love him, even to have a shot at giving him the things he needed. — Sarah Fine

But for all its miseries, there was an unmistakable allure to the jockey's craft ... Man is preoccupied with freedom yet laden with handicaps. The breadth of his activity and experience is narrowed by the limitations of his relative weak, sluggish body. The racehorse, by virtue of his awesome physical gifts, freed the jockey from himself. When a horse and a jockey flew over the tack together, there were moments in which the man's mind wedded itself to the animal's body to form something greater than the sum of both parts. The horse partook of the jockey's cunning; the jockey partook of the horse's supreme power. For the jockey, the saddle was a place of unparalled exhilaration, of transcendence. — Laura Hillenbrand

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

This is a very fundamental reason why man cannot become meditative - or why very few men have dared to become meditative. Our training is of the mind. Our education is for the mind. Our ambitions, our desires, can only be fulfilled by the mind. You can become president of a country, prime minister, not by being meditative but by cultivating a very cunning mind. The whole education is geared by your parents, by your society, so that you can fulfill your desires, your ambitions. You want to become somebody. Meditation can only make you a nobody. — Rajneesh

In her growing years, Ammu had watched her father weave his hideous web. He was charming and urbane with visitors ... He donated money to orphanages and leprosy clinics. He worked hard on his public profile as a sophisticated, generous, moral man. But alone with his wife and children he turned into a monstrous, suspicious bully, with a steak of vicious cunning. They were beaten, humiliated, and then made to suffer the envy of friends and relations for having such a wonderful husband and father. — Arundhati Roy

And man is the greatest killer, the greatest hunter of them all. The whole world of nature knows man for the irresistible master. The roar of his gun, the cunning of his trap, the strength and agility of his arm place all else beneath him. Should man then be treated by nature differently from the other dominants, the army ants and the wasps? It — Jeff VanderMeer

Well, well," said he, at last. "It is, of course, possible that a cunning man might change the tires of his bicycle in order to leave unfamiliar tracks. A criminal who was capable of such a thought is a man whom I should be proud to do business with. — Arthur Conan Doyle

He has an old man's caution and a young man's ambition, and has never lacked for cunning. — George R R Martin

For the first time she could see a man's head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through the tunnel of his mouth. — Zora Neale Hurston

Many are the marvels of God's Creation, but none so marvelous as man. Or so cunning, for good or ill. — S.M. Stirling

It's natural for a man to defend what's dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles-in short to defend not himself but people whom he's never met and moreover would not care to be in the same room with him-you have to condition him into loving violence not for the benefits it bestows on him but for its own sake. Result: the society has to defend itself from its defenders, because what's admirable in wartime is termed psychopathic in peace. It's easier to wreck a man than to repair him. Ask any psychotherapist. And take a look at the crime figures among veterans. — John Brunner

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

When he would steal a kiss from her, it always took her breath away. No one kissed like Rick. No other man was able to make her lose all conception of time when he kissed her.

That was not all. Rick was fun to work with and made her laugh. As a partner, he had talents that she desperately needed in her business. He was a cunning and crafty man, and his talents helped in solving many cases. — Linda Weaver Clarke

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! — Nathaniel Philbrick

Esau was an hunter - And a man that knew how to live by his wits, for he was a cunning hunter. A man of the field - All for the game, and never so well but as when he was in pursuit of it. And Jacob was a plain man - An honest man, that dealt fairly. And dwelt in tents - Either, As a shepherd, loving that safe and silent employment of keeping sheep, to which also he bred up his children, Gen 46:34. Or, As a student, he frequented the tents of Melchizedek or Heber, as some understand it, to be taught by them divine things. — John Wesley

The perfection preached in the gospels never yet built an empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning. — Charles De Gaulle

Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and did not care to read
who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had rank, and honours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state. He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach. Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning. — Samuel Johnson

A female magician named Catherine Trianon, who lived together 'as man and wife' with another cunning-woman, was described as having more learning 'in the tip of her finger' than others acquired in a lifetime. When her house was searched in 1680 twenty-five manuscript volumes on the occult sciences were found. — Owen Davies

Did you piss your pants, Eric?"
"Sed did it."
"Sed pissed your pants?" Trey shook his head slightly. "Man, that takes pissed off to a whole new level."
"I think that's pissed on, not off," Brian said. — Olivia Cunning

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

I've trained you to be as honest as any man who ever lived, but if virtue serves to guide our actions with our friends and allies, every sort of trick can be used against our enemies. That's why you were taught never to hunt a lion or a bear without some special advantage. Didn't that kind of lesson teach you cunning and deceit? — Xenophon

Even were the time to come when there would be neither poor nor rich, yet there will always be wise and stupid, sly and simple, for so there have ever been and ever will be. The strong man sets his foot on the neck of the weakling; the cunning man runs off with the simpleton's purse and sets the dunce to work for him. Man is a crooked dealer and even his virtue is imperfect. Only he who lies down never to rise again is wholly good. — Mika Waltari

But he was one of those weak creatures, void of pride, timorous, anemic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves. — H.G.Wells

It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of death; to know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible; and to sit and count the dreary hours through long, long, nights - such nights as only watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart, the pent-up, hidden secrets of many years, poured forth by the unconscious helpless being before you; and to think how little the reserve, and cunning of a whole life will avail, when fever and delirium tear off the mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the wanderings of dying men; tales so full of guilt and crime, that those who stood by the sick person's couch have fled in horror and affright, lest they should be scared to madness by what they heard and saw; and many a wretch has died alone, raving of deeds, the very name of which, has driven the boldest man away.
("The Drunkard's Death") — Charles Dickens

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two. — William Hazlitt

The cunning man steals a horse, the wise man lets him alone. — Benjamin Franklin

A man has made great progress in cunning when he does not seem too clever to others. — Jean De La Bruyere

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

He sensed her aroma and greedily breathed in the fragrance. He must not let himself be duped. Those cunning bastards at Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Dior knew exactly what was required to trap a poor man. — Jo Nesbo

There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat" in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he says it as if another had said it to him. — Francis Bacon

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

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

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

The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose upon you by the cunning devices of an artful impostor, nor by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a superficial and imprudent pretender. He is not ostentatious even of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public notice and reputation. — Adam Smith

Because of his very great love, he could not steal from this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape detection. — Jack London

It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less. — Francis Bacon

One Man may be more cunning than another, but not more cunning than every body else. — Benjamin Franklin

The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses. No creature who began as a mathematical improbability, who was selected through millions of years of unprecedented environmental hardship and change for ruggedness, ruthlessness, cunning, and adaptability, and who in the short ten thousand years of what we may call civilization has achieved such wonders as we find about us, may be regarded as a creature without promise. — Robert Ardrey

Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy. — Lord Chesterfield

Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. — Frederic Bastiat

If I thought last night was a onetime thing, I wouldn't be sitting here discussing this with you, but you're putting the stipulation on me that if I want a man, it has to be Ethan - nice choice, by the way ... — 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

Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood. — Herman Melville

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review. — Edward Dahlberg

You could knock," Trey said. Brian paused in the bedroom's doorway holding his towel around his waist. Standing before the long dresser, Trey wrapped his arms around the thin young man in front of him and plastered his body to the guy's back. Trey's hand slid up under the hem of his new friend's T-shirt. The guy's eyes widened and he caught Trey's hands in his. "H-hey, Master Sinclair, erm, Brian. Can I call you Brian?" Brian shrugged and the guy flushed. "This isn't what it looks like. I don't like guys or anything." He shook his head vigorously. "You will," Trey murmured, inching the guy's shirt further up his belly. "Trey, are you molesting virgins again?" Brian grinned at his best friend's delight with his latest conquest. — Olivia Cunning

Man is either Viceroy or else he is an animal that claims special rights by virtue of its cunning and the devouring efficiency of teeth sharpened by technological instruments ... But if he is Viceroy, then all decay and trouble in the created world that surrounds him is in some measure to be laid to his account — Charles Le Gai Eaton

But evil is a cunning force. It can find the weakness in any man, even the bravest. [ ... ] It only takes a single weak moment to let evil in. — William Joyce

A cunning man overreaches no one half as much as himself. — Henry Ward Beecher

Very often it happens that prayer is on the lips, but in the heart cunning, incredulity or unbelief, so that by the lips the man seems near to God, whilst in his heart he is far from Him. — John Of Kronstadt

A cunning fellow is man, inventive beyond all expectation, he reaches sometimes evil and sometimes good — Sophocles

We know all about you, Rincewind the magician. You are a man of great cunning and artifice. You laugh in the face of Death. Your affected air of craven cowardice does not fool me.
It fooled Rincewind. — Terry Pratchett

Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government
which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man. — Sax Rohmer

No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool. — George Savile

It is a pity that, commonly, more care is had
yea, and that among very wise men
to find out rather a cunning man for their horse than a cunning man for their children. — Roger Ascham

People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness. — S.I. Hayakawa

He is many things - dangerous and devious, cunning and deadly, a good friend and an implacable enemy - but he comes from an age when a man's word was indeed precious. — Michael Scott

What man so wise, what earthly wit so ware,
As to descry the crafty cunning train,
By which deceit doth mask in visor fair,
And cast her colours dyed deep in grain,
To seem like truth, whose shape she well can feign,
And fitting gestures to her purpose frame,
The guiltless man with guile to entertain? — Edmund Spenser

After all, my young Dodger, what exactly are you? A stalwart young man, plucky and brave and apparently without fear? Or, possibly, I suggest, a street urchin with a surfeit of animal cunning and the luck of Beelzebub himself. — Terry Pratchett

Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me. — Amy Tan

Don't think so much of your own Cunning, as to forget other Men's; a Cunning Man is overmatched by a cunning Man and a Half. — Benjamin Franklin

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. — Thomas Carlyle

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends. — Giorgos Seferis

You never believed in the meaning of this world, and you therefore deduced the idea that everything was equivalent and that good and evil could be defined according to one's wishes. You supposed that in the absence of any human or divine code the only values were those of the animal world - in other words, violence and cunning. Hence you concluded that man was negligible and that his soul could be killed, that in the maddest of histories the only pursuit for the individual was the adventure of power and his own morality, the realism of conquests. — Albert Camus

As equally as one may use size, the cunning James Crosbie was once classified as the most dangerous man in Scotland, notorious for his daring bank robberies and escaping on a bicycle. He was the criminal mastermind behind many successful crimes carried out throughout the UK. — Stephen Richards

Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not. — Francis Bacon

Figures cannot calculate the amount collected by those public and private robbers: it is more than would liberate every slave in the United States; it would pay the British debt! They say, We do not force people to give. I see no difference between forcing a man out of his money, at the mouth of a pistol, and forcing it from by trick and cunning; the crime is the same. — Anne Royall

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

What is denominated discretion in man we call cunning in brutes. — Jean De La Fontaine

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

May the merciful god, if indeed there be such, guard those hours when no power of the will, or drug that the cunning of man devises, can keep me from the chasm of sleep. Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom, but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of night, haggard and knowing, peace rests nevermore. — H.P. Lovecraft

Satan is cunning and man is weak, but God rules the heart of his faithful, and does what he will. — Edouard Rene De Laboulaye

It is in just such stupid things clever people are most easily caught. 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. Porfiry is not such a fool as you think.... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He didn't like violence, no matter what he'd told Jessica before. He was good at it, no denying that, but he did not like it. Yes, violence was the closest modern man came to his true primitive self, the closest he came to the intended state of nature, to the Lockean ideal, if you will. And yes, violence was the ultimate test of man, a test of both physical strength and animalistic cunning. But it was still sickening. Man had - in theory anyway - evolved for a reason. In the final analysis, violence was indeed a rush. But so was skydiving without a parachute. — Harlan Coben

What I could really use is an older man. A mentor. One who could tell me how things fit together.
He would have asked me to do chores that I felt were meaningless. I would have been impatient and protested, but done them nonetheless. And eventually, after several months of hard labour, I would have realised that there was a deeper meaning behind it all, and that the master had a cunning plan all the time. — Erlend Loe

I don't like raw tomatoes. And I thought I'd skip the onions so I could make out with the sexiest man alive after lunch without subjecting him to my death breath. — Olivia Cunning

Barlinnie Prison stands on dark and bloody ground. It is a temple of lost souls, and a place of living nightmares. It's been the breaker of many a man's dreams for more than a century. This prison works to a model of penitence with no pretence of rehabilitation. The criminal population that society has forsaken has filled this once, seemingly, bottomless pit to overflowing with their despair and nightmares of pain. More specifically, it is the battleground of an undeclared war that still ravages to this day, between the screws and the cons. The screws, backed by their authority, would use violence, but in return the prisoners would have to resort to their cunning, beguile, and the odd sudden act of violence. — Stephen Richards

Lozen is my right hand ... strong as a man , braver than most, and cunning in strategy, Lozen is a shield to her people. — Victorio

Cunning to wise, is as an Ape to a Man. — William Penn

Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion? — David Hume

On Andrew Jackson: His native strength compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach; and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him a sharper tool. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The gift that isn't big enough to make a mark, but is too big to leave the possessor in peace. And so they can't be content to be Sunday painters, or poets who write for a few friends, or composers whose handful of delicate little settings of Emily Dickinson can't find a singer. It's a special sort of hell. — Robertson Davies

The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness. The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle. — Carl Jung