Quotes & Sayings About Shrewdness

As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know. — Natalia Ginzburg

There is a kind of shrewdness many men have that enables them to get money. It is the shrewdness of the fox after the chicken. A low order of mentality often goes with it. — Sherwood Anderson

Nobody who has done business in any country with an Indian would doubt the shrewdness of Indians, but what Indian people bring to the world is something special and unique, which is the capacity for a loving interaction. — Gregory David Roberts

Fearfulness obscures the distinction between real threat on one hand and on the other the terrors that beset those who see threat everywhere ... Granting the perils of the world, it is potentially a very costly indulgence to fear indiscriminately, and to try to stimulate fear in others, just for the excitement of it, or because to do so channels anxiety or loneliness or prejudice or resentment into an emotion that can seem to those who indulge it like shrewdness or courage or patriotism. — Marilynne Robinson

I had no money to start,
For Jack decreed in his pride:
The Caveman's wife didn't work -
It was his job to provide.

A brief reminder right here:
Let men believe they are shrewd,
But even women of old
Embroidered mittens for food. — Joyce Rachelle

But Pierre had been born with a shrewdness that made him early aware that a failure to believe that human events were ordered by a higher power was regarded by many in the highest positions as obnoxious and even sinful, and as nothing was to be gained by exciting such hostility, it was better to give a silent or even smiling assent to the fatuous idealism to which, particularly in youth, one was so relentlessly exposed. — Louis Auchincloss

Leave, instead. Get away for good, far from the life we've lived since birth. Settle in well-organized lands where everything really is possible. I had fled, in fact. Only to discover, in the decades to come, that I had been wrong, that it was a chain with larger and larger links: the neighborhood was connected to the city, the city to Italy, Italy to Europe, Europe to the whole planet. And this is how I see it today: it's not the neighborhood that's sick, it's not Naples, it's the entire earth, it's the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things. — Elena Ferrante

The probability of finding a particular book increases in relation to the clarity of the store's focus, the diligence and shrewdness of the bookseller, and the size of the business. — Gabriel Zaid

All the shrewdness of 'man' seeks one thing: to be able to live without responsibility. — Soren Kierkegaard

A spider is slow, but its web catches the fastest flies. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Wit, shrewdness about other aspects of life, grasp of the arts, fundamental good nature, none seemed any help in solving his emotional problems; to some extent these qualities, as displayed by him, were even a hindrance. — Anthony Powell

The smartest fish are still in the sea. — Matshona Dhliwayo

All you have to do is buy cheap and sell dear, act with thrift and shrewdness, and be persistent. — Hetty Green

A true generous heart can never revolve majorly with monetary skills nor business acumen nor cunning mind. — Angelica Hopes

What boy well raised can compare with your street gamin who has the knowledge and the shrewdness of a grown-up broker. — Elbert Hubbard

Her shrewdness had a streak of satiric bitterness continually renewed and never carried utterly out of sight, except by a strong current of gratitude towards those who, instead of telling her that she ought to be contented, did something to make her so. — George Eliot

Why do you need street smarts? Shrewdness? Toughness? It's to protect something soft that is going to be in danger if it's exposed at the wrong time and place. It's to protect a soul. But to protect your soul, you have to have one to start with. — Peter Schjeldahl

Adam and Eve each denied their own responsibility when confronted by God because they saw themselves as too important to be wrong, to be weak, to be vulnerable to the shrewdness of a mere serpent. The dramatic increase in self-importance over the turn of the millennium, occurring alongside a steady increase in divorce, white-collar crime, morbid obesity, and high-profile falls from grace, smacks of a similar stink. We're too important for silly rules. We can't be expected to keep promises we made after circumstances change. Give us enough time, and we'll figure out who's really to blame for the trouble we find ourselves in. Jake — David A. Zimmerman

His education had been neither scientific nor classical - merely "Modern." The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help him. He was a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers) and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling. — C.S. Lewis

Jews are known for many things, but strength, swiftness, and agility are not among them. There is one trait, as controversial as it is familiar, for which Jews are above all known, and that is shrewdness in business. — Steven Pinker

When a wolf is hungry it befriends sheep. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God, as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony. — John Calvin

(Then) appeared wisdom and shrewdness, and there ensued great hypocrisy. — Lao-Tzu

Those who fled will fight another time. — Tertullian

Never teach your child to be cunning or you may be certain you will be one of the very first victims of his shrewdness. — Josh Billings

Our children's salvation is not dependent on the strength of our faith or the shrewdness of our answers. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

Hitler, who founded the Third Reich, who ruled it ruthlessly and often with uncommon shrewdness, who led it to such dizzy heights and such a sorry end, was a person of undoubted, if evil genius. It is true that in the German people, as a mysterious Providence and centuries of experience had molded them up to that time, he found a natural instrument which he was able to shape to his own sinister ends. — William L. Shirer

A prince who is not himself wise cannot be wisely advised ... Good advice depends on the shrewdness of the prince who seeks it, and not the shrewdness of the prince on good advice. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Learning options will indeed mushroom for business students and leaders, but it will take prudence and shrewdness to find and utilize the best option. — Warren Bennis

They think in terms of a sentimental ballad. And that's what terrifies you about them. It isn't their cruelty, it isn't even their shrewdness - it's their extraordinary naivete. Everything in their whole bloody world is a cliche. Everything is born out of a cliche, rests on a cliche, survives by a cliche. And they believe in the cliches - there's no hope — Jean Rhys

Modern amorists are sometimes taken aback at the prospect of investing in a relationship with no guarantee of reward. It is precisely that absence, however, that separates gift from shrewdness. Love cannot be extracted, commanded, demanded, or wheedled. It can only be given. (208) — Thomas Lewis

Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savour being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, that so they may be more fully relished. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them. — G.K. Chesterton

What pages did I write?
What bellicosity!
What words did I bite?
What ferocity!
This ink, in magnanimity, as I took,
Find me a humble name in your stale book,
This hour, from shrewdness, as I steal
My scars heal, my imaginations kneel;
These musings around your benevolent brook
Find me a humble name in your stale book,
Find me a humble name in your stale book. — Ashfaq Saraf

Such a sweet letter from Lady Conway ... You remember my telling you about her? Her memory's bad. Can't recognize her relations always and tells them to go away."
"That might be shrewdness really," said Miss Marple, "rather than a loss of memory. — Agatha Christie

This one will be shrewd, I think, and shrewdness is a limitation on the mind. Shrewdness tells you what you must not do because it would not be shrewd. — John Steinbeck

Shrewdness in public life all over the world is always honored, while honesty in public men is generally attributed to dumbness and is seldom rewarded. — Will Rogers

HST: Wasn't there a Harris Poll that showed that only 3 percent of the electorate considered the Watergate thing important?
McGovern: Yeah. That's right. Mistakes that we made seemed to be much more costly. I don't know why, but they were. I felt it at the time, that we were being hurt by every mistake we made, whereas the most horrendous kind of things on the other side somehow seemed to--because, I suppose, of the great prestige of the White House, the President's shrewdness in not showing himself to the press or the public--they were able to get away with things that we got pounded for. — Hunter S. Thompson