Good Cunning Quotes & Sayings

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

The Fall of the House of Zeus is a riveting American saga of ambition, cunning, greed, corruption, high life and low life in the land of Faulkner and Grisham. These are good ol' boys gone bad with flair, private jets, and lots of cash to carry. Curtis Wilkie, a child of the South and a reporter's reporter, is the perfect match for this wild ride. — Tom Brokaw

At the bar on the Favoritenstrasse, Julius the policeman talked to us about dignity, evolution, the great Darwin and the great Nietzsche. I translated so that my good friend Ulises could understand what he was saying, although I didn't understand any of it. The prayer of the bones, said Julius. The yearning for health. The virtue of danger. The tenacity of the forgotten. Bravo, said my good friend Ulises. Bravo, said everyone else. The limits of memory. The wisdom of plants. The eye of parasites. The agility of the earth. The merit of the soldier. The cunning of the giant. The hole of the will. Magnificent, said my good friend Ulises in German. Extraordinary. — Roberto Bolano

[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

I've been called promiscuous. Not a pretty word, is it? Makes you think of the gloop that comes out of your nose or what comes up your throat when you're gagging, if you're trying to swallow down something you didn't necessarily mean to swallow. Promiscuous: your face has to pucker when you say it.
I prefer to think of myself as an adventurer. Charting the souls of so many of god's creatures, and of the floaty beings that populate the land of notions. It's a job. It's a calling. It takes strong thigh muscles, intelligence, cunning, a good pair of boots. It takes heart, in fact. The heart to stay on. To not be defeated. — Sylvia Brownrigg

No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been brought up to deceive and be cunning, to protect themselves from our society. I don't want to be like that. — Carlos Fuentes

Never judge another knight without first knowing the strength and cunning of the dragons he fights. — Richelle E. Goodrich

That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good. — Samuel Johnson

They abolish the external form, they suppress the formal sales of slaves, and then they imagine and assure others that slavery is abolished. They are unwilling to see that it still exists, since people, as before, like to profit by the labor of others, and think it good and just. This being given, there will always be found beings stronger or more cunning than others to profit thereby. The same thing happens in the emancipation of woman. At bottom feminine servitude consists entirely in her assimilation with a means of pleasure. They excite woman, they give her all sorts of rights equal to those of men, but they continue to look upon her as an object of sensual desire, and thus they bring her up from infancy and in public opinion. — Leo Tolstoy

Friend, my enemy, I call you out. You, you, you there with a bad thorn in your side. You there, my friend, with a winning air. Who pawned the lie on me when he looked brassly at my shyest secret. With my whole heart under your hammer. That though I loved him for his faults as much as for his good. My friend were an enemy upon stilts with his head in a cunning cloud. -Dylan Thomas — Dylan Thomas

I am not cunning...I'm good at seeing around obstacles is all. — Melinda Salisbury

Zac dangled his legs off the edge of the building, hanging onto every word I said as though I were some old time bard telling an epic war tale. I tried to be as detailed as possible, and I knew that I was doing a good job when he'd lean back and shut his eyes. He'd breathe slowly and watch the pictures that I painted for him with my words. He'd smile, not a cunning toothy one, but a sincere smile that comes only from being truly happy. I'd sit across from him and just watch his reactions. We could be up there for hours. I would see the sunset across his face and be as captivated with his skin's changing colours as he was with my everyday stories. That's when I learned to dislike winters. — Ashley Newell

I have begotten them and I have reared them but I have no comments to make and no advice to give. I do not know if I have done them good or ill. I do not know whether, in their own generation, they will do well or badly; I cannot even guess whether they will build because of me or in spite of me. I know only that they will build elsewhere, and that I have here no continuing city. I can barely live with my children, yet I must shortly and inconceivably live without them. I have hardly known them, hardly begun to walk in the streets of their minds and the gardens of their pleasures, hardly explored with them the city that they are, and already they begin to go their ways and to take my city with them. My exile comes implacably. By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered thee O Sion. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. I am absurd, I know; but it is the infirmity in which I glory. — Robert Farrar Capon

This siren, this goat-footed bard, this half human visitor to our age the hag-ridden and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity. One catches in his company that flavour of final purposelessness, inner responsibility, existence outside or away from our Saxon good and evil, mixed with cunning, remorselessness, love of power. — John Maynard Keynes

No matter how daring or cautious you may choose to be, in the course of your life you are bound to come into direct physical contact with what's known as Evil. I mean here not a property of the gothic novel but, to say the least, a palpable social reality that you in no way can control. No amount of good nature or cunning calculations will prevent this encounter. In fact, the more calculating, the more cautious you are, the greater is the likelihood of this rendezvous, the harder its impact. Such is the structure of life that what we regard as Evil is capable of a fairly ubiquitous presence if only because it tends to appear in the guise of good. You never see it crossing your threshold announcing itself: "Hi, I'm Evil!" That, of course, indicates its secondary nature, but the comfort one may derive from this observation gets dulled by its frequency. — Joseph Brodsky

These blasphemous thoughts were such as stirred up questions in me against the very being of God, and of His only beloved Son: As, whether there were in truth, a God or Christ? And whether the holy scriptures were not rather a fable, and cunning story, than the holy and pure word of God? 97. The tempter would also much assault me with this, How can you tell but that the Turks had as good scriptures to prove their Mahomet the Saviour, as we have to prove our Jesus is? And, could I think, that so many ten thousands, in so many countries and kingdoms, should be without the knowledge of the right way to heaven, (if there were indeed a heaven); and that we only, who live in a corner of the earth, should alone be blessed therewith? Every one doth think his own religion rightest, both Jews and Moors, and Pagans; and how if all our faith, and Christ, and scriptures, should be but a think so too? — John Bunyan

I am defined by my will to survive, not by intelligence or cunning or money or good looks. The Creator didn't see her way clear to give me those things, instead she gave me a strong will. — Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

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

Youths should study,' grumbled the Old Woman, 'and not take the laws apart. And you, dear Youth, before you become acquainted with the Beautiful Woman, take a good look into her Garden through the window tomorrow morning, when everything is clearly and genuinely visible in the light of the sun. You will see that in the Garden there are no flowers which are familiar to anyone here, and only such flowers as none of us in the City know. Just think about this carefully, after all, there is something strange about it. The devil is cunning; is this not his creation for the damnation of people?'
("The Poison Garden") — Valery Bryusov

Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows. — Kurt Vonnegut

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

For we were thinking of freedom. That's the word like a worm in my brain. Yes? No? How much? How little? The word is a signal for piracy and theft and cunning. We'll be free and the smartest will then be able to enslave the others. But! But there is another meaning to the word. Of all words this one is the most dangerous. We who know must be wary. The word makes us feel good - in fact the word is a great ideal. But it's with this ideal that the spiders spin their ugliest webs for us. — Carson McCullers

Virtue!
to be good and just
Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

Recognize the malice, cunning, and hypocrisy that power produces, and the peculiar ruthlessness often shown by people from good families. — Marcus Aurelius

The one thing I learned is that the Russians are some of the most cunning people on earth. They never do anything without a very good reason. And just because they're no longer a superpower doesn't mean they don't want to be again. - Oliver Stone — David Baldacci

Those words, temperate and moderate, are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice. — Thomas Paine

Crying is good for the soul, or so they say. — Chelsea Ballinger

Evil is a far more cunning and persevering propagandist than good, for it has no inward strength, and is driven to seek countenance and sympathy. — James Russell Lowell

A St. Trinian's girl would be sadistic, cunning, dissolute, crooked, sordid, lacking morals of any sort and capable of any excess. She would also be well-spoken, even well-mannered and polite. Sardonic, witty and very amusing. She would be good company. In short: typically human and, despite everything, endearing. — Ronald Searle

The rabbits became strange in many ways, different from other rabbits. They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away.They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price? — Richard Adams

I hope it's not all I'll ever do, but I know I've played enigmatic characters. For me, the good characters are people who get places, are devious, are cunning and tricky and hard to pin down. Obviously, if you play one and you do an okay job of it, that'll be on people's minds. — Aidan Gillen

though you want to flee from yourself so as not to have to live what remains unlived until now.56 But you cannot flee from yourself. It is with you all the time and demands fulfillment. If you pretend to be blind and dumb to this demand, you feign being blind and deaf to yourself. This way you will never reach the knowledge of the heart. The knowledge of your heart is how your heart is. From a cunning heart you will know cunning. From a good heart you will know goodness. So that your understanding becomes perfect, consider that your heart is both good and evil. You ask, "What? Should I also live evil?" The spirit of the depths demands: "The life that you could still live, you should live. Well-being decides, not your well-being, not the well-being of the others, but only well-being. — C. G. Jung

In the face of brutality I was prudent. Before injustice I held my peace. I sacrificed the things in hand for the good of they hypothetical whole. I believed in the tongue instead of the fist. As an armor against oppression I taught patience and faith in the human soul I know now how wrong I was. I have been a traitor to myself and to my people. All that is not. Now is the time to act and to act quickly. Fight cunning with cunning and might with might — Carson McCullers

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

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

He made a pit and digged it. He was cunning in his plans and industrious in his labors. He stooped to the dirty work of digging. He did not fear to soil his own hands. He was willing to work in a ditch if others might fall therein. What mean things men will do to wreak revenge on the godly. They hunt for good men as if they were brute beasts - they that will not give them the fair chase afforded to the hare or the fox, but must secretly entrap them because they can neither run them down nor shoot them down. Our enemies will not meet us to the face for they fear us as much as they pretend to despise us. But let us look on to the end of the scene. The verse says he has fallen into the ditch that he has made. Ah, there he is. Let us laugh at his disappointment. Lo, he is himself the beast. He has hunted his own soul. The chase has brought him a goodly victim. So should it ever be. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them. — William Hazlitt

Gold is for the mistress -- silver for the maid --
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade."
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
"But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all. — Rudyard Kipling

Are you saying good-bye or what?" Sed ased gruffly.
"Nope, we were making out," Rebekah said. "His sexiness overwhelms me sometimes, and I have to kiss him. — Olivia Cunning

Why is the tao so valuable? Because it is everywhere, and everyone can use it. This is why those who seek will find, And those who reform will be forgiven; Why the good will be rewarded, And the thief who is cunning will escape. — Laozi

She was remarkably beautiful. And yet there was something in her eyes that I didn't like. A bit of...no...I don't want to say falsity...that would be too...it was--I don't know how to explain it -- it was something like triumphant cunning. Odile needed to dominate. She wanted to impose her will, her version of the truth. Her beauty had given her a lot of self-confidence and she believed, almost in good faith, that if she said something then it became true. This worked with your husband, who adored her, but not with me, and she resented me for that. — Andre Maurois

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

In my experience heroes are no more good than you or I. And though occasionally noble, they are just as often cunning, resourceful, and a little brash. — Jonathan Auxier

The action of Pity leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world's garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses. — C.S. Lewis

The Baron was good with two things: sex, and death. And what was sex anyway - what was orgasm but what the French (those cunning linguists of the language of love) referred to as a Little Death? What was life but a ticking clock toward the grave, and how did life start but with an unfettered hump toward morning? — Daniel Younger

Everyone thinks I'm showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I'm silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I'm tired, selfish when I eat one bite more than I should. — Anne Frank

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

It's easy to slide into believing you're the hypnotist here, the mirage master, the smart cookie who knows what's real and how all the tricks are done. The fact is you're still just another slack-jawed mark in the audience. No matter how good you are, this world is always going to be better at this game. It's more cunning than you are, it's faster and it's a whole lot more ruthless. All you can do is try to keep up, know your weak spots and never stop expecting the sucker punch. — Tana French

The English are good at bad guys - the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it. — Idris Elba

Rumors. I'll not say more on the subject. Cheese in your eggs?" "Yes, please." * * * With Kendra gone, Seth got out the equipment he had bundled in his towel, including his emergency kit and the jar he had smuggled from the pantry. The jar was now empty, washed clean in the bathroom sink. Taking out his pocket knife, Seth used the awl to punch holes in the lid. Unscrewing the top, he gathered bits of grass, flower petals, a twig, and a pebble, and placed them in the jar. Then he wandered across the garden from the pool, leaving the skimmer behind. If skill failed, he would resort to cunning. He found a good spot not far from a fountain, then took the small mirror from his — Brandon Mull

Nature is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. She is cunning, but for good ends. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. I trust her. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

To be enjoyable, an AI must put up a good fight but lose more often than win. It must make the player feel clever, sly, cunning, and powerful. It must make the player jump from his seat shouting, "Take that, you little shit! — Mat Buckland

I was dreaming about you."

"Was it a good dream?"

"Not really. I was chasing you and you wouldn't stop running from me."

~Brian/Myrna — Olivia Cunning

Animations are really powerful - it's not just entertainment, it's a very cunning way to get good ideas across. — Benedict Cumberbatch

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

And in Kandahar he was taught about survival, about fighting and killing and hunting, and he learned much else without being taught, such as looking out for himself and watching his tongue and not saying the wrong thing, the thing that might get him killed. About the dignity of the lost, about losing, and how it cleansed the soul to accept defeat, and about letting go, avoiding the trap of holding on too tightly to what you wanted, and about abandonment in general, and in particular fatherlesness, the lessness of fathers, the lessness of the fatherless, and the best defenses of those who are less against those who are more: inwardness, forethought, cunning, humility and good peripheral vision. The many lessons of lessness. The lessening from which growing could begin. — Salman Rushdie