A Quote by Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Cunning pays no regard to virtue, and is but the low mimic of reason.

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

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Cunning Low Mimic Pays Reason Regard Virtue

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Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
English - Politician
September 16, 1678 - December 12, 1751

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.

Plato

Never esteem people (including yourself) more because they have money, nor think less of anyone (including yourself) because they lack it. Virtue is the only just reason for respecting anyone, lack of virtue the only reason for holding anyone in low regard.

William Penn

No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment.

Claude Adrien Helvetius

Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists principally in her mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and re-act on each other in accordance with their own nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the process, carries out reason's intentions.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.

Joseph Addison

Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, and there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.

Samuel Johnson

Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor, and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure, and pays with pain; he promises profit, and pays with loss, he promises life, and pays with death. But God pays as he promises; all his payments are made in pure gold.

Thomas Brooks

And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us.

Plato

A cunning mind emphatically delights in its own cunning, and is the ready prey of cunning.

Anna Brownell Jameson

If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, piousness is virtue paying tribute to itself.

Michael Kinsley

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Edward Dahlberg

Don't think so much of your own Cunning, as to forget other Men's; a Cunning Man is overmatched by a cunning Man and a Half.

Benjamin Franklin

Virtue is uniform, conformable to reason, and of unvarying consistency; nothing can be added to it that can make it more than virtue; nothing can be taken from it, and the name of virtue be left.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs.

Mary Gaitskill

By the virtue of modesty the devout person governs all his exterior acts. With good reason, then, does St. Paul recommend this virtue to all and declare how necessary it is and as if this were not enough he considers that this virtue should be obvious to all.