Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.
A cunning mind emphatically delights in its own cunning, and is the ready prey of cunning.
It is a pity that, commonly, more care is had--yea, and that among very wise men--to find out rather a cunning man for their horse than a cunning man for their children.
Do not be held a cheat, even though it is impossible to
live today without being one. Let your greatest cunning lie in covering up what
looks like cunning.
Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.
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.
Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.
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 point diseased.
One Man may be more cunning than another, but not more cunning than every body else.
Cunning is neither the consequence of sense, nor does it give sense. A proof that it is not sense, is that cunning people never imagine that others can see through them. It is the consequence of weakness.
Cold & cunning come from the north: But cunning sans wisdom is nothing worth.
Those who have the most cunning affect all their lives to condemn cunning; that they may make use of it on some great occasion, and to some great end.
The very cunning conceal their cunning; the indifferently shrewd boast of it.
In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.
One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.
Whoever appears to have much cunning has in reality very little; being deficient in the essential article, which is, to hide cunning.
Cunning grows in deceit at seeing itself discovered, and tries to deceive with truth itselft.