Scoundrel Quotes & Sayings

With a woman, always make good use of a secret. She will be proportionally grateful to you, like a scoundrel who grants his respect to an honest man he has been unable to swindle. — Honore De Balzac

Where was it that I read about a man condemned to death saying or thinking, an hour before his death, that if he had to live somewhere high up on a cliffside, on a ledge so narrow that there was room only for his two feet - and with the abyss, the ocean, eternal darkness, eternal solitude, eternal storm all around him - and had to stay like that, on a square foot of space, an entire lifetime, a thousand years, an eternity - it would be better to live so than die right now! Only to live, to live, to live! To live, no matter how - only to live! ... How true! Lord, how true! Man is a scoundrel! And he's a scoundrel who calls him a scoundrel for that. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Lies of omission do not exist. The concept is a very human one. It is the product of your story writing again. You have written a story about the truth, making emotional demands of it, and in particular, of those in possession of it. Your demands are based on a feeling of entitlement to the facts, which is very childish. You can never know all of the facts. Only I can. And since it's impossible for me to reveal all facts to you, it is my discretion alone that decides which facts will be revealed in the finite time we have. If I do not volunteer information you deem critical to your fate, it possibly means that I am a scoundrel, but it does not mean that I am a liar. And it certainly means you did not ask the right questions.
One can make either true statements or false statements about reality. All of the statements I make are true. — Scratch

Like a battalion of marines at roll call, her neck hairs marshaled to five-alarm status. She stumbled back to her desk, jerked open the botton drawer, retrieved a pair of Nighthawk binoculars, fixed the scopes on him, and fiddled with the focus. Gotcha. Hair the colour of coal. Chocolate brown eyes. A five-o'clock shadow ringing his craggy jawline. Handsome as the day was long ...
He sauntered towards her, oozing charisma from every pore. Charlee forgot to breathe. And then he committed the gravest sin of all, knocking her world helter-skelter. The scoundrel smiled. — Lori Wilde

Compare two people, one of whom has been crippled by an accident, the other by an early environmental history which makes him lazy and, when criticized, mean. Both cause great inconvenience to others, but one dies a martyr, the other a scoundrel. — B.F. Skinner

A concern with 'public morality' is - if not the last refuge of a scoundrel - the first foray of the fascist. — Erica Jong

Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable place than the workhouse that Mr. Honesty lives in at the end of his career? — Wilkie Collins

But I return to that terrible statement of Bertrand Russell's: "Better Red than dead." Why did he not say it would be better to be brown than dead? There is no difference. All my life and the life of my generation, the life of those who share my views, we all have had one viewpoint: Better to be dead than to be a scoundrel. In this horrible expression of Bertrand Russell's there is an absence of all moral criteria. Looked at from a short distance, these words allow one to maneuver and to continue to enjoy life. But from a long term point of view it will undoubtedly destroy those people who think like that. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

He wouldn't charm her. She'd almost forgot what his kiss tasted like., felt like. She only remembered it when she drifted into dreams. Then it became so vivid, so real. To her mortification, she always felt a little thrill. Her life had been filled with gentlemen of the finest quality. James Sterling was like none of them, he was unpolished. A diamond in the rough. A scoundrel. A pirate. — Jade Parker

Within the hour, Abraham Ravenwood was denounced as the Devil, a cheat, a scoundrel, a no-goodnik, and a thief. — Kami Garcia

...Dickey Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them - look hard. Some day if you are clever - cleverer than anyone in the Jago right now - if you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough - one of a thousand - maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living, drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is - that's your aim in life - there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps - It's the best the world has for you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol and the gallows. So do your devil most, or God help you, Dicky Perrot - though he wont: for the Jago's got you! — Arthur Morrison

A scoundrel is an evil heliotrope turning always in the direction of the most powerful. — Umberto Eco

No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting. — Murray Kempton

I am not here to pass civilities or compliments with you, but on other business. I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damned scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them ... and as I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life. — Nathan Bedford Forrest

Least hypothesis held no place of preference; Occam's razor could not slice the prime problem, the Nature of the Mind of God (might as well call it that to yourself, you old scoundrel; it's a short, simple, Anglo-Saxon monosyllable, not banned by having four letters - and as good a tag for what you don't understand as any). — Robert A. Heinlein

I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes. — Douglas MacArthur

A man's behaviour may be quite harmless and even beneficial, when he ismorally behaving like a scoundrel. And he may do great harm when he is morally acting on the highest principles. — George Bernard Shaw

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel. — Samuel Johnson

I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel. — Bertrand Russell

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world. — Thomas Carlyle

An economist is a scoundrel who tells you the way things are rather than the way you want them to be. — William Nordhaus

The greater the stupidity, the greater the clarity. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damn scoundrel, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it ... — Nathan Bedford Forrest

I think people are a mixture of everything. I like desperate characters because they do things that most of us normally wouldn't do. If a character is a scoundrel or a liar you think you know them, but then I can bring some emotion to them and they become much fuller than you ever imagined. So what I try to do is have a story where you don't quite know where it's going, and characters who you don't quite know where they're going. — Richard Shepard

No scoundrel is so stupid as to not find a reason for his vile conduct. — Shakti Gawain

The princess, the scoundrel, the farm boy. The senator, the smuggler, the dreamer. The Rebel leader, the captain, the pilot. More than what they believed of themselves. More than what others saw of them. And together, a new hope for the future. — Alexandra Bracken

The pleasure of being a scoundrel can be adequately savored in silence. — Remy De Gourmont

I couldn't help my blush. Especially as Rhys added, Tonight, I want you to wear that crown to bed. Only the crown. Scoundrel. Always. I — Sarah J. Maas

Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel. In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity. — H.L. Mencken

If you really want peace of mind and inner calm, you will get it. Regardless of how unjustly you have been treated, or how unfair the boss has been, or what a mean scoundrel someone has proved to be, all this makes no difference to you when you awaken to your mental and spiritual powers. — Joseph Murphy

Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of "respectability" in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too petinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong. — Edgar Allan Poe

I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep. — Joseph De Maistre

The tobacco business is a conspiracy against womanhood and manhood. It owes its origin to that scoundrel Sir Walter Raleigh, who was likewise the founder of American slavery. — John Harvey Kellogg

General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocite, flatterer. — William Blake

Look at them running to and fro about the streets, every one of them a scoundrel and a criminal at heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to get me off and they'd be wild with righteous indignation. Oh, how I hate them all! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Who ever thought to put the word "hero" in heroin? — Anthony Liccione

For the rival candidate, an effort must be made to destroy his chance by establishing by dint of affirmation, repetition, and contagion that he is an arrant scoundrel, and that it is a matter of common knowledge that he has been guilty of several crimes. — Gustave Le Bon

The narrator refers to a character as an oily scoundrel whose hands were heavy with the money that stuck to them. — Pearl S. Buck

The wretch was far too handsome for words. Why did God have to give such good looks to such abominable men? First Colonel Taylor, and now this pirate. It was damned unfair.
She groaned. The scoundrel even had her cursing. Where did it end? — Sabrina Jeffries

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars; General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer: For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars. — William Blake

I'd never painted anything before. I was quite content to take other people's work since I didn't care anyway about the subject matter. I approached subject matter as a scoundrel. I had nothing to say about it whatsoever. I only wanted to make these exciting paintings. — Tom Wesselmann

As long as I live under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation. — William Faulkner

Plunge, scoundrel, rogue, monster - for such I take thee to be - plunge, I say, into the mare magnum of their histories; and if thou shalt find that any squire ever said or thought what thou hast said now, I will let thee nail it on my forehead, and give me, over and above, four sound slaps in the face. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

There are many occasions when the highest praise one can receive is the attack of some given scoundrel. — Theodore Roosevelt

Pay attention to minute particulars. Take care of the little ones. Generalization and abstraction are the plea of the hypocrite, scoundrel, and knave. — William Blake

Patriotism: The first resort of a scoundrel. — Ambrose Bierce

Is this where you tell me that I'm a scoundrel, and I say that I think you like me because I'm a scoundrel? Because we've already covered this, I'm the Han Solo. — Rainbow Rowell

I believe you owe me a token, my lady. Or do you wish me to extend credit?"
"What, and have you claim I owe you some further recompense?" she declined with a scornful laugh as she flipped him a wooden chip.
"Definitely not!"
Christopher sighed in exaggerated disappointment. "Too bad. I was looking forward to collecting."
"You always are," she murmured as he leaned forward to pick up the chip.
"You can hardly fault me there." His tone was equally soft as his eyes caressed her warmly. "You sorely test my restraints, my lady."
"Restraints?" She raised a delicate brow in disbelief. "I have seen no evidence of such."
"Madam, if you really knew, you'd think me a scoundrel."
"I already do."

-Christopher & Erienne — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Sometimes a scoundrel is useful to our party precisely because he is a scoundrel. V. I. Lenin — Catherine Merridale

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool. — Voltaire

Make not, when you work a deed of shame, The scoundrel's plea, 'My forbears did the same. — Al-Ma'arri

Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel! — Michael Crichton

Honest men cannot be expected to anticipate the actions of scoundrels. — Mary Street

If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel ... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. — Martin Van Creveld

I am not a scoundrel, but I'm broadminded. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Miss Kinsley regarded him with the look of disgust girls reserved for snails and frogs. "Any man who would suggest to a young woman that she should elope rather than listen to her papa's advice can only be up to no good."
"Elope?" Oliver queried, his eyes narrowing on Miss Kinsley. "This scoundrel proposed marriage to you?"
"Now, Miss Kinsley," Nathan began in his best placating voice, "we both know it wasn't like-"
"Quiet!" Oliver snapped at him. "Or I swear not even Maria will keep me from throttling you."
Nathan swallowed. Hard. — Sabrina Jeffries

Never trust a man whom you know to have acted like a scoundrel to others, whatever friendliness he may profess to feel towards yourself, however plausible he may be, or however kindly he may behave; be sure that, the moment he has anything to gain by so doing, he will "throw you over." — Charlie Day

It is no great misfortune to oblige ungrateful people, but an unsupportable one to be forced to be under an obligation to a scoundrel. — Philip James Bailey

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. — Eugene V. Debs

We do not want to be told what we know. We do not want to call things by their names, although we're willing to call one another bad ones. We call meanness nobility and hatred honor. The way to make yourself a hero is to make me out a scoundrel. You won't admit that either, but it's true. — Thomas Wolfe

I've been thinking." She pretended to mull the question over. "What if I decided to go flying around the galaxy with some scoundrel?" Han raised his eyebrows and pointed toward his own chest. Leia laughed. "Unless you had another scoundrel in mind." "Hey, hey. I'm the only scoundrel up for the job." He shook his head in - surprise? Disbelief? Leia wasn't sure. What mattered most was the warmth in his smile. Even if Han wasn't convinced she intended to do this, he liked the idea. Down — Claudia Gray

He was utterly incapable of resisting the maneuvers of the mealy-mouthed scoundrel that the Neapolitan Vincentian, Bugnini,77 a man as bereft of culture as he was of basic honesty, soon revealed himself to be. Even — Louis Bouyer

If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, "Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!"
do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn't. Birds are not free. The people you've just evicted would sputter, "With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We're calling the police, you scoundrel. — Yann Martel

If patriotism is a scoundrel's last refuge, then the concept of freedom is his first sales pitch. — James Rozoff

The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. — Charles P. Kindleberger

We are accustomed to the artist scoundrel or specialist in vice, and unaccustomed to the creator in whom passion and reason and moral integrity hold in balance. But greatness of intellect and feeling, or soul and conduct magnanimity, in short does occur; it is not a myth for boy scouts, and its reality is important, if only to give us the true range of the term "human," which we so regularly define by its lower reaches. — Jacques Barzun

Cheap heroism is always easy, and even to sacrifice life is easy too; because it is only a case of hot blood and an overflow of energy, and there is such a longing for what is beautiful! No, take the deed of heroism that is labourious, obscure, without noise or flourish, slandered, in which there is a great deal of sacrifice and not one grain of glory - in which you, a splendid man, are made to look like a scoundrel before every one, though you might be the most honest man in the world - you try that sort of heroism and you'll soon give it up! While I - have been bearing the burden of that all my life. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He seemed exactly like the kind of man that Lady Berwick, who had raised Kathleen, had warned her about. "You will encounter men who will have designs on you, my dear. Men without scruple, who will employ charm, lies, and seductive skills to ruin innocent young women for their own impure gratification. When you find yourself in the company of such a scoundrel, flee without hesitation." "But how will I know if a man is a scoundrel?" Kathleen had asked. "By the unwholesome glint in his eye and the ease of his charm. His presence may excite rather lurid sensations. Such a man has a certain something in his physical presence . . . a quality of 'animal spirits,' as my mama used to call it. — Lisa Kleypas

Whether or not patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, national security can be the last refuge of the tyrant. — Robert Walker, Baron Walker Of Gestingthorpe

This is the woman I'm t' marry! Where have ye been all me life, me love?"
And without a blink, I replied, "Don't start with me, ye scoundrel! If ye come with an empty purse, ye can leave now, fer I'd rather be unwed than unfed. — Karen Hawkins

I would sooner receive injustice in the Queen's courts than justice in a foreign court. I hold that man or woman to be a scoundrel who goes abroad to a foreign court to have the judgments of the Queen's courts overturned, the actions of her Government countermanded or the legislation of Parliament struck down. — Enoch Powell

Still, he had been a charismatic, talented scoundrel who almost certainly was on to a new woman after a week in Japan; there was nothing to long for or feel sorry for. — J. Ryan Stradal

A gentleman can't let a lady sleep in an armchair while he takes his ease in a bed."
"But you are not a gentleman," she pointed out. "You are the greatest scoundrel in all the land."
He tilted his head to consider that. "All right. You take the chair. — Christina Brooke

Dave Rudabaugh is an ignorant scoundrel! I disapprove of his very existence. I considered ending it myself on several occasions but self-control got the better of me. — Doc Holliday

40 million Russians are convinced that I am a scoundrel, a thief, a criminal or a CIA agent, who deserves to be shot, hanged or drawn and quartered. — Anatoly Chubais

Whitney: You black-hearted, treacherous, conniving scoundrel.
Clayton: Your flattery warms my heart — Judith McNaught

If a dog on a leash does not run off, no one will regard him as a loyal companion on the basis of this fact alone. No reasonable individual will speak of love if a man sleeps with a defenseless woman who is virtually chained hand and feet. No one, unless he is a real scoundrel, will be proud of a woman's love gained by financial support or by power. No decent person will accept love that is not given voluntarily. The compulsory morality of marital obligations and familial authority is a morality of cowards and impotent people who are afraid of life, people who are incapable of experiencing, through the power of natural love, what they try to produce for themselves with the help of marital laws and the police. — Wilhelm Reich

I think,' Olympia said slowly, 'that I know you quite well.' She looked down at the deck and added in a carefully mild voice, 'You can be a scoundrel; I know that. You stole from me and betrayed me and lied to me. You have no morals and no ideals; you think of yourself first and you're a coward sometimes on that account.' She hesitated, chewing her lip. 'What people call a coward, anyway. I don't know what cowardice is anymore. I don't know what heroism is.' She looked up. 'But I know one thing, and I learned it from you. I know what courage means. It means to pick up and go on, no matter what. It means having a heart of iron, like they say. You have that. — Laura Kinsale

My claims were justified in all men's sight; I put my trust in equity and right; Yet, to my horror and the world's disgrace, Justice is mocked, and I have lost my case! A scoundrel whose dishonesty is notorious Emerges from another lie victorious! — Moliere

I hope he's just a scoundrel . . . because a saint can stir up ten times as much mischief as a scoundrel. — Robert A. Heinlein

Dandy?" Sam was full-on scowling now. "What the hell does that scoundrel want?"
Finley returned his dark expression with one of her own. "You shouldn't use words you can't spell, mutton head. — Kady Cross

They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king. — Bob Dylan

The man was a legendary scoundrel. An expert ruiner of young ladies. And he'd never once been punished for it. Perhaps because he was so very good at it. It seemed a shame to punish someone for what was clearly a remarkable skill. — Sarah MacLean

I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel. — G.K. Chesterton

Fahlberg is a scoundrel. It nauseates me to hear my name mentioned in the same breath with him. — Ira Remsen

The damnest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the infinite mercy of Providence ... also the damnest fool. — Abraham Lincoln

law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel. In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity. - H. L. MENCKEN, NOTES ON DEMOCRACY — Radley Balko

There is no god, there is no god, there is no god at all. He who invented god is a fool. He who propagates god is a scoundrel. He who worships god is a barbarian. — Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

You're no longer a wallflower, nor a virgin, nor the helpless child who had to endure life with the Maybricks. You're a viscountess with a sizable fortune, and a scoundrel of a husband. Whose rules will you adhere to now? — Lisa Kleypas

Forgive me ... I called you an idiot. I spoke too hastily. You are not. Had I given it more thought, I would have called you a scoundrel. — Lloyd Alexander

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there's a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you're writing your poem, there's one less scoundrel in the world. And I'd like a world, wouldn't you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I'm certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don't think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say 'We loved the earth but could not stay. — Ted Kooser

Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. — Bob Dylan

I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." ... Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel. — Roger Ebert

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You, sir, are a scoundrel. As if he'd heard her thought, he glanced her way. Their gazes held, a pair of miscreants recognizing each other in a roomful of upstanding people. — Sherry Thomas

He was a scoundrel, and he deserved whatever happened to him. But for just one shining, magical night Lily would pretend he was a prince. — Linda Lael Miller

If you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel! — Robert Louis Stevenson

I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any other man's living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

He will have to learn, I know, that all people are not just- that all men and women are not true. Teach him that for every scoundrel there is a hero that for every enemy there is a friend. Let him learn early that the bullies are the easiest people to lick. — Abraham Lincoln

In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel. — Roger Scruton