Knavery Quotes & Sayings

An entirely honest man, in the severe sense of the word, exists no more than an entirely dishonest knave; the best and the worst are only approximations to those qualities. Who are those that never contradict themselves? yet honesty never contradicts itself. Who are they that always contradict themselves? yet knavery is mere self-contradiction. Thus the knowledge of man determines not the things themselves, but their proportions, the quantum of congruities and incongruities. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Knavery and flattery are blood relations. — Abraham Lincoln

By fools, knaves fatten; by bigots, priests are well clothed; every knave finds a gull. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

Knavery?" Art3mis said after she'd finished reading it. "Were you using a thesaurus when you wrote this? — Ernest Cline

Even knaves may be made good for something. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We never deceive for a good purpose: knavery adds malice to falsehood. — Jean De La Bruyere

Now I will show myselfTo have more of the serpent than the dove;That is
more knave than fool. — Christopher Marlowe

Knaves will thrive when honest plainness knows not how to live. — James Shirley

If an eighty-six-year-old woman has been clear-seeing from a young age, she will have gone through a lot of life developing a keen eye for snares and pitfalls, an ear for deceit, and a good nose for knavery. And by such an age, a smart woman with no illusions is one to whom courage comes far more readily than it does to those young people who don't yet know the world for what it is. — Dean Koontz

Knavery is the best defense against a knave. — Plutarch

Knaves starve not in the land of fools. — Charles Churchill

In public affairs, stupidity is more dangerous than knavery, because it is harder to fight. — Woodrow Wilson

I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it; knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence. — William Shakespeare

A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days. — Aphra Behn

But I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature — David Hume

The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. — Theodore Roosevelt

He was dignity distorted, bravery become knavery, sanctimoniousness masking sin. He was a mirror, jeering at the subject it reflected. Yet so muted were the jeers, so delicate the inaccuracies of delineation, that they evaded detection. True and false were blended together. The false was merely an extended shadow of the true. — Jim Thompson

It is a curious paradox that precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity, to those mysterious powers assumed by others; and in those regions of darkness and ignorance where man cannot effect even those things that are within the power of man, there we shall ever find that a blind belief in feats that are far beyond those powers has taken the deepest root in the minds of the deceived, and produced the richest harvest to the knavery of the deceiver. — Charles Caleb Colton

Now Thorndyke is going to enjoy himself. To him a perfectly unintelligible will is a thing of beauty and a joy forever; especially if associated with some kind of recondite knavery. — R. Austin Freeman

Zeno first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defence against a knave. — Plutarch

A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person. — William Hazlitt

Very well. On my love for Mencheres, I swear that I will honor both you and Leila as my true partners, and I will keep my insolence, trickiness , filthiness, and general knavery to as much a minimum as I can manage. — Jeaniene Frost

Now what I want to know is what happened when you found Bryony, Leo," said Will.
"Did you just say your sister sent me, pack up everything and come with me this moment?"
"More or less."
"And she came away with you?"
"More or less." Leo tossed Bryony a mischievous look. "Although there might have been
laudanum, drugging, and a midnight abduction involved."
"Now that's a much better story," said Matthew. "I would pay to read that one."
"And for his knavery, Leo lost one of his - more important parts," said Bryony.
"No!" Matthew and Will shouted in unison.
"Bryony!" Callista squeaked.
"Kidney," Leo cried. "It was just a kidney. A man can live a perfectly vigorous life with
one kidney."
"You can call it a kidney if you want," said Bryony. — Sherry Thomas

It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work — David Hume

The worst of all knaves are those who can mimic their former honesty. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

He who esteems the Virginia reel A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery Than crushing His African children with slavery, Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon Are mounted for hell on the devil's own pillion, Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows, Approaches the heart through the door of the toes. — James Russell Lowell

We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood. — Jean De La Bruyere

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

It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend; but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not. — Charles Caleb Colton

But society is ignorant and venomous, devoid of any trace of insight or understanding. It exalts knavery, and worships stupidity. It crucifies the intelligent, and puts the diseased in dungeons. — S. S. Van Dine

Honor is what separates man from beast. The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to actually be what we pretend to be. Let others laugh and mock those of us they perceive beneath them, but remember, good Cadegan, honor lies inside our hearts and it is that which makes us act with mercy and compassion against those who have most wronged us. Even if the jackal wounds your pride, do not reward such knavery by surrendering your honor to him. Only then have you truly lost all. Never let anyone take your soul, for they are not worth your eternity or your heart. Instead — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout. — George Berkeley

Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another. — Steven Pinker

A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth. — Edgar Degas

Knavery's plain face is never seen till used. — William Shakespeare

Our own distrust gives a fair pretence for the knavery of other people. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own. — Charles Caleb Colton

Knavery seems to be so much a the striking feature of its inhabitants that it may not in the end be an evil that they will become aliens to this kingdom. — George III

ACKBAR - O knavery Most vile, O trick of Empire's basest wit. A snare, a ruse, a ploy: and we the fools. What great deception hath been plied today - O rebels, do you hear? Fie, 'tis a trap! — Ian Doescher

Knavery is ever suspicious of knavery. — Joseph Addison

There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others. — Edmund Burke

When the Many are rulers, it cannot but be that, again, knavery is bred in the state; but now the knaves do not grow to hate one another - they become fast friends. For they combine together to maladminister the public concerns. This goes on until one man takes charge of affairs for the Many and puts a stop to the knaves. As a result of this, he wins the admiration of the Many, and, being so admired, lo! you have your despot again; — Herodotus

Fashion
a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse. — Charles Churchill