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Cunning Quotes


These are some of the best 'Cunning' quotations and sayings.

A cunning man overreaches no one half as much as himself.
All my own experience of life teaches me the contempt of cunning, not the fear. The phrase "profound cunning" has always seemed to me a contradiction in terms. I never knew a cunning mind which was not either shallow, or, on some points, diseased.
Cleverness and cunning are incompatible. - I never saw them united. - The latter is the resource of the weak, and is only natural to them. - Children and fools are always cunning, but clever people never.
Cunning has effect from the credulity of others. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.
Cunning is none of the best nor worst qualities; it floats between virtue and vice: there is scarce any exigence where it may not, and perhaps ought not to be supplied by prudence.
Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men, as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.
Cunning is the ape of wisdom.
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.
Cunning signifies, especially, a habit or gift of overreaching, accompanied with enjoyment and a sense of superiority. - It is associated with small and dull conceit, and with an absolute want of sympathy or affection. - It is the intensest rendering of vulgarity, absolute and utter.
Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.
Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind.
In a great business there is nothing so fatal as cunning management.
The certain way to be cheated is to fancy one's self more cunning than others.
The common practice of cunning is the sign of a small genius.-It almost always happens that those who use it to cover themselves in one place, lay themselves open in another.
The greatest of all cunning is to seem blind to the snares which we know are laid for us; men are never so easily deceived as while they are endeavoring to deceive  others.
The most sure way of subjecting yourself to be deceived, is to consider yourself more cunning than others.
The very cunning conceal their cunning; the indifferently shrewd boast of it.
We should do by our cunning as we do by our courage, - always have it ready to defend ourselves, never to offend others.
We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom, and certainly there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise man, not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.